# D&D Political Systems



## Snoweel (Jun 4, 2006)

Hi.

I've been thinking for a long time about the political systems that would arise in a world that featured the massive difference in individual power levels inherent to D&D.

I've always thought that all forms of social power - political, social, economic - would be dictated by the personal might of an individual, ie. class levels/hit dice. I just don't think it could be any other way. Democracy, especially (generally not a feature of D&D nations anyway) would surely never even be entertained. The idea that all men and women are equal just doesn't fit when a 17th level sorcerer can decimate an entire army single-handedly.

I think heredity of political power would likewise only be as sure as the scion's ability to personally ensure his/her position, as well as protect his/her people.

Remember that rulership was originaly directly related to the ability of the ruling individual or group to protect the common people.

So I can't see a 4th level aristocrat ruling a kingdom where 15th level fighters lead the army - and there are no historical parallels here, historically there's never been a 15th level fighter. This is an individual who is truly capable of getting away with breaking the law. Hell, he's capable of *being* the law.

Am I missing something here?


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## Umbran (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> Am I missing something here?




Yep.  The fact that one man, even a high-level wizard, simply cannot control the minds and bodies of an entire nation by force.  Even if he's the mightiest man around, he simply cannot be everywhere at once personally.

Ergo, whoever leads has to lead by virtue of getting other people to do his bidding for him.  One way of doing that is through personal might, but that is not the only, or even the most reliable, way to motivate people to do your bidding.  

Remember that people's behavior does not always follow what seems "logical".  Religion, philosophy, and tradition are _powerful_ forces in the human (and presumably non-human) psyche.  Powerful enough to beat skill with a sword or arcane incantations.


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## Snoweel (Jun 4, 2006)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Yep.  The fact that one man, even a high-level wizard, simply cannot control the minds and bodies of an entire nation by force.  Even if he's the mightiest man around, he simply cannot be everywhere at once personally.




I agree though I'm not even talking about forcing the people to do his bidding.



> Ergo, whoever leads has to lead by virtue of getting other people to do his bidding for him.  One way of doing that is through personal might, but that is not the only, or even the most reliable, way to motivate people to do your bidding.




Ah but I think it is. The level of personal might available to a high level D&D character far surpasses anything that ever existed in the real world - a character with class levels in the high teens has the ability and equipment to do just about anything he/she wants. People will naturally defer to such an individual - they need him/her on their side. More so, they will desperately strive not to cross such a character. There is simply no 'great leveller' in place like we have in real life - even the president of the US has very real limitations on his power (look what happened to Nixon), as does the greatest fighter on the planet. I mean, you could pick 4 or 5 guys off this board who could beat Tim Sylvia to a pulp, if they worked together.  



> Remember that people's behavior does not always follow what seems "logical".  Religion, philosophy, and tradition are _powerful_ forces in the human (and presumably non-human) psyche.  Powerful enough to beat skill with a sword or arcane incantations.




Do you not think religion, philosophy and tradition would look very different in a world where a high enough level character of any class would make light work of a Large chromatic dragon? These higher concepts arose due to lack of tangibles. I just don't think people are going to philosophise too much when the 'gods' walk amongst them, and your level of personal freedom and security is directly tied to your personal might.


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## ChristianW (Jun 4, 2006)

It's not something that can easily be rationalized. D&D evolved from a wargame mentality where 6th level fighters were meant to fight 6HD monsters on the 6th level of a dungeon. When you try to figure out a powerful PC would influence the political landscape, well, you have to fudge a bit.

In my games I have decided that powerful PCs have been made part of the system, bought off by the powers that be in exchange for land, title, and wealth. Being part of the system encourages thte PCs to smash evil aligned NPCs who are power mad.

I hope this helps a bit, but I do agree with your basic premise that a motivated band of PCs could hack their way through most towns and cities, cutting down the citizenry like wheat.


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## Snoweel (Jun 4, 2006)

ChristianW said:
			
		

> In my games I have decided that powerful PCs have been made part of the system, bought off by the powers that be in exchange for land, title, and wealth. Being part of the system encourages thte PCs to smash evil aligned NPCs who are power mad.




I think this is the key - checks and balances. The presence of similarly high level peers would stop a character from doing *whatever* the hell they pleased, but I still think all the positions of influence will be filled by high level characters - low and even mid-level NPCs just wouldn't be competitive socially. They might exist as figureheads I guess.


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## drothgery (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> I think this is the key - checks and balances. The presence of similarly high level peers would stop a character from doing *whatever* the hell they pleased, but I still think all the positions of influence will be filled by high level characters - low and even mid-level NPCs just wouldn't be competitive socially. They might exist as figureheads I guess.




Depends. My working theory is that it's going to be rare in D&D worlds for a ruler to _stay_ low-level unless he's a figurehead (because the day to day process of ruling will involve very real challenges, and successfully meeting them gains XP). On the other hand, that may very well mean that an heir who inherits the throne after his mother died an untimely death will have to gain a few levels quickly if he wants to hold on to it. Lawful societies may very well find a hereditary aristocracy useful.


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## Snoweel (Jun 4, 2006)

drothgery said:
			
		

> Depends. My working theory is that it's going to be rare in D&D worlds for a ruler to _stay_ low-level unless he's a figurehead (because the day to day process of ruling will involve very real challenges, and successfully meeting them gains XP).




I'm definitely with you on this one. Heads of nations, priesthoods, guilds, etc. should level at a fair rate - slower than the PCs of course but faster than most of their underlings.


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## DM_Matt (Jun 4, 2006)

A couple scattered points:

1. IRL, religion is a powerful potivator for political power and allegence.  Now imagine how much more powerful religion would be if there were a large number of gods constantly and publically involved in the affairs of mortals.

2. The OP assumes that high-level characters are universally politically ambitious.  Many do not want political power, but may like stability or good government, value tradition or religion, or just might like particular politicians, political parties, or ideologies.  There are all kinds of possible explanations why high-level characters may support the rulership of someone far less leveled than they.


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## KiwiGlen (Jun 4, 2006)

Not only the massive power differences between individuals, what about the effect of so many powerful forces external to whatever political form of organisation exists? For example, the simple knowledge that spawn-creating undead exist, what effect does that have on the societies that these individuals would want to create? Most people want to sleep at night without having their soul ripped from their bodies and transformed.

Even by mid-level most PC parties scoff at wraiths encountered normally in a dungeon corridor (dumb wraith). But what if that same wraith is encountered at the local marketplace, full of commoners?

There are plenty of things to test one's mettle against, and human nature as it is if external forces don't exist, the humans find something petty to take offence of between themselves.


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## Snoweel (Jun 4, 2006)

DM_Matt said:
			
		

> A couple scattered points:
> 
> 1. IRL, religion is a powerful potivator for political power and allegence.  Now imagine how much more powerful religion would be if there were a large number of gods constantly and publically involved in the affairs of mortals.
> 
> 2. The OP assumes that high-level characters are universally politically ambitious.  Many do not want political power, but may like stability or good government, value tradition or religion, or just might like particular politicians, political parties, or ideologies.  There are all kinds of possible explanations why high-level characters may support the rulership of someone far less leveled than they.




You're completely right of course. But that still leaves low-level ruler at the mercy of those capable of either protecting or ousting him/her. If high-level bodyguards go away on an adventure, said low-level ruler better hope high-level threats don't surface.

Either way, it's not the kind of ruler that inspires confidence.


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## Teflon Billy (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> Hi...




Nice to see you back man

email me at jeff underscore ranger at yahoo.com.

Hope the army is treating you well.


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## Snoweel (Jun 4, 2006)

KiwiGlen said:
			
		

> Most people want to sleep at night without having their soul ripped from their bodies and transformed.




I dare say it would be close to 100% of people.


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## Snoweel (Jun 4, 2006)

Teflon Billy said:
			
		

> Nice to see you back man




Hello mate!

It just gnawed at me that I never reached 1000 posts.  



> email me at jeff underscore ranger at yahoo.com.
> 
> Hope the army is treating you well.




As you can see by this thread, I have been thinking far too much.


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## Kwitchit (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> So I can't see a 4th level aristocrat ruling a kingdom where 15th level fighters lead the army - and there are no historical parallels here, historically there's never been a 15th level fighter. This is an individual who is truly capable of getting away with breaking the law. Hell, he's capable of *being* the law.
> 
> Am I missing something here?




Agamemnon- 10th-level Fighter or thereabouts
Achilles- 20th-level Demigod Fighter

When they have a disagreement, Achilles doesn't beat down Agamemnon. He just goes off and sulks.

On a less serious note, look at the Azure Kingdom in Order of the Stick. Lord Shojo has specifically stated that he is a 14th-level Aristocrat. There are Clerics in the city of at least 17th level (they cast Gate), and probably other classes of similar level. Yet Shojo stays in charge.

The reason:
For each high-level character who wants to seize power, there are at least 10 others who don't want him to, and are probably loyal to the low-level monarch. Thus, the high-level characters keep each other in check. Sure, they will have more power than others, with big spells and retainers bordering on a small private army, but they will not actually rule.

If there's only one high-powered character, things are naturally different. For an example of  _that_, you need only look at what happens in Wheel of Time when Rand Al'Thor arrives in Tear. The High Lords (probably low-level aristocrats) immediately bow down to him.


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## Someone (Jun 4, 2006)

It´s obviously possible for a powerful individual to teleport into the throne room, kill the guards in twelve seconds, assesinate the royal family, and coerce thr court into obeying him. But we all know what happens then: a baby is miraculously rescued from the castle and given to a peasant family in adoption, and grows into a honorable and healthy, if somewhat naïve, man. He then learns about his past (an event frequently involving an old man, family heirloom or birthmark), learns the arts of war and starts a quest to get his throne back.

So, seizing the throne by force is like putting a death sentence on you, only delayed 18 years. That´s why adventurers stay away from thrones.


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## Rothe (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> Hi.
> 
> I've been thinking for a long time about the political systems that would arise in a world that featured the massive difference in individual power levels inherent to D&D.
> 
> ...




Two things I think,
(1) Personal charisma can sway millions and build a following of loyal retainers that make sure your orders are carried out, really it's about who can get the army to follow them for whatever reason (and historically a popular general often is the one); and
(2) Class based systems are notoriously bad in my experience (or IMHO) with providing a template to provde versimilitude to the "real-world" unless you included a "manager/ruler" class with skill/feats/talents...etc. geared to persuading people, administration, etc. of course where do you stop adding classes?

D&D adds the complication of magic, where one wizard might defeat an army.  Some mention a balance of power as what keeps a weakiling on the throne.   Maybe so, but human nature being what it is I'd imagine the powerful would form an open or secret oligarchy that really rules behind the scenes.


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## Kragar00 (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> Ah but I think it is. The level of personal might available to a high level D&D character far surpasses anything that ever existed in the real world - a character with class levels in the high teens has the ability and equipment to do just about anything he/she wants. People will naturally defer to such an individual - they need him/her on their side. More so, they will desperately strive not to cross such a character. There is simply no 'great leveller' in place like we have in real life - even the president of the US has very real limitations on his power (look what happened to Nixon), as does the greatest fighter on the planet. I mean, you could pick 4 or 5 guys off this board who could beat Tim Sylvia to a pulp, if they worked together.




Have you heard of Hitler, Saddam Hussien, or even Castro? Any dictator can do whatever he wants... he just has to make sure that his army is better than anyone elses...



			
				Snoweel said:
			
		

> Do you not think religion, philosophy and tradition would look very different in a world where a high enough level character of any class would make light work of a Large chromatic dragon? These higher concepts arose due to lack of tangibles. I just don't think people are going to philosophise too much when the 'gods' walk amongst them, and your level of personal freedom and security is directly tied to your personal might.




For this reason I think that people would be _more_ inclined to follow lower level people.... What happens if the hereditary title has been decreed by a god? All of a sudden, messing with him means you're messing with a god.... The same thing happens with an organized religion..... If a priesthood puts you in power, there's probably a pretty good reason for it and the common folk will rarely revolt...

However, there is still the idea of charisma, wisdom, and intelligence.... imagine a 17th level battle tank who siezes control of a nation... sure, he can bully anyone into doing what he wants, but he knows _nothing_ about ruling a country.... People start embezzling, fleeing in fear, or doing a good lot of nothing and the battle tank never knows....
Instead, you have a 4th level aristrcroat with +20 in diplomacy (due to several synergies, skill emphasis, and other feats) and who wouldn't follow him? Couple that with a little bit of knowledge of tactics and, while he can't fight to save his life, if he tells other people where to go and what to do, he can work wonders.... That in itself inspires a little respect.... and once you get the respect of a couple of high level characters, you suddenly gain the respect of more....
Leadership is as much about controling people as it is making the right kind of friends.... If you make bad decisions, then you don't stay in power long... On the other hand, the right friends can really boost your career...
Sure, you may get some high level upstart who wants to stage a coup, but then he has to get through all your body guards and have his own army.... 
And just for the point, I would never let my bodyguard go away on adventures.... I may recruit from adventurers, but the job wouldn't allow for that sort of work on the weekends... That's what other adventurers, mercenaries, and military strike teams are for...


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## NewJeffCT (Jun 4, 2006)

I definitely agree with Kragar above.  A 4th level aristocrat who has been raised in a kingdom's political courts, who knows how to lean on other nobility to gain aid for his or her cause, who has connections to certain powerful people in other allied kingdoms, etc and pretty soon you have a very effective ruler.


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## Umbran (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> I agree though I'm not even talking about forcing the people to do his bidding.




Well, why else have him as leader, if it isn't that he can force you to take him?  Out of respect for the strength?  

Think, for a moment, about Star Trek.  Folks cry to the skies that it is unrealistic to have your most valuable person (the Captain) going on away missions - you don't put your leader out in risky positions.  Same logic should apply here - if the mightiest are the leaders, then the country either loses their leaders regularly, or they lose the services of their mightiest people.

Similarly, note that Arthur himself was not the greatest of the Round Table knights.  And Merlin wasn't king.  

Plus, the things that make you a mighty warrior or wizard of cleric do _not_ make you the best leader - they don't have much in the way of social skills, which are paramount for a leader.



> Ah but I think it is. The level of personal might available to a high level D&D character far surpasses anything that ever existed in the real world - a character with class levels in the high teens has the ability and equipment to do just about anything he/she wants.




Neither here nor there, because, as you noted, others of similar power can and will stop them.  Heck, groups of people of lesser power can and will stop them.  



> People will naturally defer to such an individual - they need him/her on their side.




I will defer to a guy who has a gun.  For the moment, while he's in my presence.  That does not mean that I think he's a good leader.  It only means that I don't want to be shot, or I need someone shot.  When I need an ecomonic plan instead of physical force, the gun becomes much less relevant.  If you don't have the skills to run a country, you won't hold the position long.  And a high BAB doesn't give you those skills.




> Do you not think religion, philosophy and tradition would look very different in a world where a high enough level character of any class would make light work of a Large chromatic dragon?




It can, if you want it to.  But it doesn't have to.  It isn't like religion and tradition are based on facts.  

The people in the fictional world don't know from "character levels".  Those are an out-of-game mechanic.  In general, the fictional people don't have their levels stamped on their foreheads, and you don't see power until it is applied.  



> These higher concepts arose due to lack of tangibles. I just don't think people are going to philosophise too much when the 'gods' walk amongst them, and your level of personal freedom and security is directly tied to your personal might.




The people in the fictional world don't know from "character levels".  Those are an out-of-game mechanic.  In general, the fictional people don't have their levels stamped on their foreheads.  They have some tangibles, but they are only seen when this prospective leader takes a risk.  

Your level of personal freedom is directly tied to your system of governance.  A society that keeps around a bunch of hihg-level paladins as police (and they're lawful, so they'll stick to their jobs as police rather than take command themselves) to protect the weak can have lots of freedom, too.  There are many possible systems.

If the gods walk amongst men, by your logic the gods should be running things, not powerful characters


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## drothgery (Jun 4, 2006)

Umbran said:
			
		

> Well, why else have him as leader, if it isn't that he can force you to take him?  Out of respect for the strength?
> 
> Think, for a moment, about Star Trek.  Folks cry to the skies that it is unrealistic to have your most valuable person (the Captain) going on away missions - you don't put your leader out in risky positions.  Same logic should apply here - if the mightiest are the leaders, then the country either loses their leaders regularly, or they lose the services of their mightiest people.
> 
> Similarly, note that Arthur himself was not the greatest of the Round Table knights.




.... but no mid-level nobody was going to take him down, either.

The ruler in a D&D world certainly doesn't have to be the highest-level guy around. He does have to have the capability to avoid getting pushed around by the highest-level guy around who's willing to try.


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## Aust Diamondew (Jun 4, 2006)

If the 15th level fighter is the leader of the nations army he could easily perform a coup against said 4th level aristocrat, which has happened historically many times.
I wouldn't be surprised either if the fighter was the de facto leader of the country.

Heroes are dangerous people, particuarly when they are 'greater' than the monarch, the wise monarch would have such a person killed or sent far away unless he was extremely loyal to the crown.  

El Cid comes to mind.


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## Aristeas (Jun 4, 2006)

In real life, the ruler is the person the army supports; he doesn't need to be personally powerful, because there are a large number of people who, for whatever reason, are willing to enforce his decrees. This is no different in a D&D world, except that instead of a great big army, the important thing to have is a loyal cadre of high-level characters, the knights of the Kingsguard or the wizards of the royal magical college or what have you. They can be loyal for any of the reasons that real world armies are loyal: tradition, religion, training, sense of honor, fear that the others will turn on them if they step out of line, etc. Of course, sometimes these reasons won't be enough and the king's high level enforcers will oust him. But real world armies do that too.

Now, someone high enough level could still wander into the palace and disintegrate the king and all his bodyguards, but that wouldn't really help them run the country. It takes cooperation from the ruled to run a country, and one man simply can't oversee enough things personally to ensure that the country is being run his way. And he has to sleep sometime. Such a person might take over a country, but it really takes an organization to run one permanently. And if the attacker brings his own organization, it's not very much different from a real world invasion, with high level characters instead of armies.


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## kigmatzomat (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> You're completely right of course. But that still leaves low-level ruler at the mercy of those capable of either protecting or ousting him/her. If high-level bodyguards go away on an adventure, said low-level ruler better hope high-level threats don't surface.




Soooo... virtually every ruler since Alexander the Great?  Face it, the emperors of Rome were protected by the Guard (any of which could kill the emperor), Hitler had his loyal cadre of killers, and the U.S. president has the Secret Service.  

Personal power doesn't work if you don't have the skills to actually rule.  The best you can hope for is a warlord status who runs a city-state that is barely above subsistence level.  Ultimately, this harsh environment you created will spawn either a movement of low-level individual (aka traditional civil war) which in d20 will eventually result in a nat 20 death or it will result in a hero that rises up and smites you.


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## SWBaxter (Jun 4, 2006)

kigmatzomat said:
			
		

> Personal power doesn't work if you don't have the skills to actually rule.




Sure, but in D&D ability in the skills to actually rule are directly related to personal power since maximum skill rank, number of feats, etc. are governed by level. Not all powerful individuals will have those skills, but those who do will be enormously better at them than non-powerful types with the appropriate skills. To some extent, a world run by D&D rules implies a very machiavellian meritocracy.

Historically, a small group ruling over a large population was driven by two major factors, agriculture and religion. Agricultural societies needed large populations and some kind of oversight to keep the population as a whole functioning. Religion provided the rulers by establishing the parameters for society's conduct. Taking these in combination, you could have a patchwork of theocratic city-states with lots of shifting alliances and conflicts, but probably very little full-scale war.

Another approach could be to take a further step back and say "why would humans (or any other 1 HD types) rule the land, anyway?" There are lots and lots of critters that are at least as smart as humanoids and are much more individually powerful. It's not inconceivable that you could have a society where all the humanoids are just slave populations working for powerful dragon/outsider/undead/whatever tyrants. Said tyrants are probably very careful to look out for any signs that a humanoid is levelling up, in order to squash such threats before they truly become powerful enough to matter. Or possibly they groom such individuals for use as a secret weapon against their rivals.


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## Balgus (Jun 4, 2006)

WOW- I can't believe that this has not been mentioned yet:

HIGH lvl fighters don't want to sit on the throne!
Most of the DND classes are not made to lead a kingdom of political leaders.  (Stereotyping0 The Bard sings and entertains, Barb bashes, Cleric leads a church, Monk meditates to improve self, Fighter fights and protects the kingdom, Wizard researches magic, Sorc shows off skills, and ....

Think Conan- the greatest Barbarian in the history of fiction. Do you think he weas happier as Conan the Barbarian taking on Thulsa Dune, or as Conan the Destrioyer, when he finally inherited the throne. What happened after he got the throne? I don't know either- but Iu think the series ended.  

Wizards adventure to further their research.  Once they reach high lvl, they still adventure, just more safely and wisely.  But which one would really enjoy sitting around making mundane decisions like tax rates and hiring new soldiers to defend the eastern borders?

My last example comes from the Incredibles.  At the end, Mr Incred asks, "Can we come out of hiding?" and the secret service man's response was, "Let the politicians decide. My job is to make sure you are taken care of..." I may have misquoted but the idea is that some people have talent. And their job is to use that talent to their best ability.  Let the politicians quibble about governance, adventurers do what they do despite the aristocrats. 

It is very conceivable to have a lvl 10 aristocrat leding a small city, where lvl 20 adventurers come and stay on their way to killing a Black Dragon.  Does that mean that the party will say, "Hey, i can kill this guy and take over teh town!" No! They are k=just passing by, and leave things as they are.  A tarde town for commerce and rest is much more useful than taking it over and worrying about how to keep the villagers from fleeing.

Just my take


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## Imp (Jun 4, 2006)

I think the presence of independently minded high level characters would tend to destabilize things.  Even a fairly low level druid could wreak all kinds of havoc if he's got a grievance.

I also think that, depending on the nature of divine power in the world, you'd be looking at an awful lot of small-scale, ironclad theocracies, and possibly (given the base mechanics) a smaller number of less-powerful, larger-scale, fairly corrupt and anarchic states that may negotiate alliances with said ironclad theocracies, given how good rogues and bards are at skill-based social interactions.  I don't necessarily agree with Balgus: bards are definitely made to lead a kingdom of political leaders... actually, it takes just a little bit of flavor changing to make bards into the super-aristocrat class of the setting.


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## Balgus (Jun 4, 2006)

Imp said:
			
		

> I also think that, depending on the nature of divine power in the world, you'd be looking at an awful lot of small-scale, ironclad theocracies, and possibly (given the base mechanics) a smaller number of less-powerful, larger-scale, fairly corrupt and anarchic states that may negotiate alliances with said ironclad theocracies, given how good rogues and bards are at skill-based social interactions.  I don't necessarily agree with Balgus: bards are definitely made to lead a kingdom of political leaders... actually, it takes just a little bit of flavor changing to make bards into the super-aristocrat class of the setting.



Although I agree that there are classes that CAN make great diplomats and aristocrats, That was not what I am saying. 

Maybe I am just not expressing myself fully, but I am saying that DND classes were made to adventure.  The NPC classes (warriors and aristocrats...) were made to deal with behind the scenes activities like running a city and buying and selling materials.  

If an adventuring group set out to conquer a town or kingdom, I am sure they are able, but I am saying they just don't want to.  

True that Bards CAN and will make the best aristocrats from the core classes, if they have the intention and ambition. But do they really want to be an aristocrat and deal exclusively with laws and regulations? The etiquette of the court? the mundane of life that is an offical? I am saying no.  If a player wnated this, then they would not be playing.  Players play to play, not to make rules.  If you wnat to make rules, be a DM. 

Just my 2c


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## Piratecat (Jun 4, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> As you can see by this thread, I have been thinking far too much.



It's damn good to see you!

Awfully interesting threads, too.

 - Kevin


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## Kragar00 (Jun 4, 2006)

Imp said:
			
		

> I think the presence of independently minded high level characters would tend to destabilize things.  Even a fairly low level druid could wreak all kinds of havoc if he's got a grievance.
> 
> I also think that, depending on the nature of divine power in the world, you'd be looking at an awful lot of small-scale, ironclad theocracies, and possibly (given the base mechanics) a smaller number of less-powerful, larger-scale, fairly corrupt and anarchic states that may negotiate alliances with said ironclad theocracies, given how good rogues and bards are at skill-based social interactions.  I don't necessarily agree with Balgus: bards are definitely made to lead a kingdom of political leaders... actually, it takes just a little bit of flavor changing to make bards into the super-aristocrat class of the setting.




So would people who know how to make bombs, can crash vehicles into large quantities of people, buy a gun and go around shooting people.... Independently minded (i.e. people who are not afraid to use the power they have) are destabilizing.... That's why solid social structures appear... to help protect the populace (by enforcing a status quo).... 
Besides, what is to prevent an ambitious leader from taking over his neighboring city-states? It only serves to increase the size of his army and the number of resources (including high-level characters) at his disposal.... especially if the people like the new guy better....


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## Kragar00 (Jun 4, 2006)

SWBaxter said:
			
		

> Sure, but in D&D ability in the skills to actually rule are directly related to personal power since maximum skill rank, number of feats, etc. are governed by level. Not all powerful individuals will have those skills, but those who do will be enormously better at them than non-powerful types with the appropriate skills. To some extent, a world run by D&D rules implies a very machiavellian meritocracy.




I don't think it is necessarily personal power, but rather experience.... The more you've been around and know, the better you are at overcoming obstacles.... That's why there are NPC classes like the aristocrat and commoner... these people don't face dragons to gain experience... the do their jobs (whatever that may be).... They can gain the levels to get all those skill ranks and feats.....


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## Imp (Jun 4, 2006)

Kragar00 said:
			
		

> So would people who know how to make bombs, can crash vehicles into large quantities of people, buy a gun and go around shooting people.... Independently minded (i.e. people who are not afraid to use the power they have) are destabilizing.... That's why solid social structures appear... to help protect the populace (by enforcing a status quo)....
> Besides, what is to prevent an ambitious leader from taking over his neighboring city-states? It only serves to increase the size of his army and the number of resources (including high-level characters) at his disposal.... especially if the people like the new guy better....



And they do destabilize things.  It's what we're seeing in the world today, as technology becomes more widespread.  The outcome of this is not preordained.

If you're talking about what would prevent a larger country from taking over theocratic city-states in D&D, you're looking at a) divine mandates and b) a monopoly on miraculous healing.  It's hard to put down high priests if they won't _stay_ down.  That really changes things.  And if necessary, they can offer those services to other independently minded high-level people.  It's a powerful bargaining chip.  The best I figure a by-the-book relatively-secular D&D government could do is play off theocracies against each other.


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## Turjan (Jun 5, 2006)

Upon reading through this thread, I notice that many people try to rationalize the D&D political system, which is mostly modeled after a historical European Baroque or newer epoque, a time, where personal power stood already back behind technological and monetary power. It's definitely not modeled after the medieval feudal system.

Most people seem to forget that medieval dukes and kings were war leaders. They led their armies themselves and, often enough, died during wars. They constantly struggled with rivals over their positions, and the more powerful ususally won. In early medieval times, the position of king was often elected, and the candidates had to subjugate their contenders before (or after ) their election. 

Coming from a noble family definitely helped, though the situation wasn't that clear cut in early medieval times. If you didn't have a proper history, you invented one. In late medieval times, this changed, and class borders got more rigid. But as I said before, this went along with the fact that individual power took a back seat to technological and monetary power during that time. In the Holy Roman Empire, emperor Maximilian I. (around 1500) got the suffix "the last knight", although he was already a child of modern times and was more interested in cannon design.

For D&D, this means that I expect all rulers without personal power to lose their position. In a world where power is pretty much a personal thing, this only makes sense.


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## Kragar00 (Jun 5, 2006)

Imp said:
			
		

> And they do destabilize things.  It's what we're seeing in the world today, as technology becomes more widespread.  The outcome of this is not preordained.
> 
> If you're talking about what would prevent a larger country from taking over theocratic city-states in D&D, you're looking at a) divine mandates and b) a monopoly on miraculous healing.  It's hard to put down high priests if they won't _stay_ down.  That really changes things.  And if necessary, they can offer those services to other independently minded high-level people.  It's a powerful bargaining chip.  The best I figure a by-the-book relatively-secular D&D government could do is play off theocracies against each other.




True. And that's where the allies help protect your power structure.... A leader can't do everything himself, which is why chosing the right allies is so important..... The leader of a kimgdom doesn't have to be the most powerful, just have the most powerful allies...


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## kigmatzomat (Jun 5, 2006)

SWBaxter said:
			
		

> Sure, but in D&D ability in the skills to actually rule are directly related to personal power since maximum skill rank, number of feats, etc. are governed by level. Not all powerful individuals will have those skills, but those who do will be enormously better at them than non-powerful types with the appropriate skills.




Only if they apply themselves.  Humans with two feats at 1st level, decent stats, bonus skill points and only a couple of levels can be quite impressive.  A 3rd level aristocrat with 14-15 stats, Negotiator, Persuasive, and Skill Focus(Diplomacy) can have skill 6+2 stat + 2 feat= 10 for sense motive, bluff, intimidate and 13 on diplomacy checks.  

A fighter of 20th level could rely on high stats (acquired through magic items) and a few skill points to be competent but without burning a lot of cross-class skill points OR picking another class they will be outmaneuvered socially by the 3rd level aristocrat.  



> Historically, a small group ruling over a large population was driven by two major factors, agriculture and religion. Agricultural societies needed large populations and some kind of oversight to keep the population as a whole functioning. Religion provided the rulers by establishing the parameters for society's conduct. Taking these in combination, you could have a patchwork of theocratic city-states with lots of shifting alliances and conflicts, but probably very little full-scale war.




Full scale war will occur with the same frequency; resources will get scarce or the local despot will go on an ego trip.  Only when the ruler can completely dominate the populace to the point that they can keep a starving populace from waging war on a well-fed neighbor will wars be prevented.  



> Another approach could be to take a further step back and say "why would humans (or any other 1 HD types) rule the land, anyway?" There are lots and lots of critters that are at least as smart as humanoids and are much more individually powerful. It's not inconceivable that you could have a society where all the humanoids are just slave populations working for powerful dragon/outsider/undead/whatever tyrants.




My campaign is kinda like this; dragons have superceded the kings as the ultimate authority once the wizards and clerics lost their power.   Unlike a traditional fighter, elder dragons have the skill points to burn on social skills and can be quite effective leaders.  Wars were limited simply because they rarely had any concern for their populaces and feared the retribution of other dragon lords. 

They are, however, challenged by a newly-powerful religious movement and at least two dragon lords have been funding adventurers to go and cause trouble elsewhere.  They have some of the most loyal citizens, which means their military could *almost* hold off a major dragon on their own (at horrible, horrible losses) but that means the other dragons aren't quite willing to commit themselves to an attack.


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## ruleslawyer (Jun 5, 2006)

kigmatzomat said:
			
		

> Only if they apply themselves.  Humans with two feats at 1st level, decent stats, bonus skill points and only a couple of levels can be quite impressive.  A 3rd level aristocrat with 14-15 stats, Negotiator, Persuasive, and Skill Focus(Diplomacy) can have skill 6+2 stat + 2 feat= 10 for sense motive, bluff, intimidate and 13 on diplomacy checks.



A high-level rogue or bard, or any high-level adventurer with appropriate items, will open a big can of whup@$$ on such pathetic skill checks. They really are the best candidates for rulership; they can negotiate better, they know more (Knowledge skill ranks: go!), they are virtually immune to attempts at assassination, poisoning, or ensorcelment, they can travel the length and breadth of their kingdom in a day, and they have the ability to quite literally charm the socks off whomever they want.

I'd say that in the world of D&D, the only reason why high-level characters wouldn't dominate everything is if they didn't _want_ to. Put another way, the default D&D assumption appears to be that adventuring is a lifestyle choice: You abandon the tasks of daily living and regular social interaction in order to travel to weird exotic locations and face down death on a regular basis, and in return you amass huge amounts of power and wealth (which, oddly, you then use to go back out and face down death again). It seems to me that adventurers are the Lancelots and Galahads of the world: Champions and wanderers, but not rulers. _Retired_ adventurers, however, have quite the perfect set of skills to run a kingdom, which is why I'd have to say (and FR, for one, agrees) that retired adventurers and similar high-level folk are likely to be the ones running kingdoms.


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## Tonguez (Jun 5, 2006)

I haven't read the other post yet but just giving my opinion

IMHO a DnD World would create a system uncannily like - Manorial Feudalism, 

which ironically is the default-ish system many people use in DnD

Manorial Feudalism is a about a few powerful individuals and a populace who swear loyalty and give service to him/her, in exchange for protection from powerful external threats.

In such a system the King rules by consent of the Nobles as first amongst equals - the Bard with good charm may be King even if the Fighter and the Wixzard are higher level.

Commoners are serfs and only slightly above property, classed individuals make up the hierarchy


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## Balgus (Jun 5, 2006)

ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> I'd say that in the world of D&D, the only reason why high-level characters wouldn't dominate everything is if they didn't _want_ to. Put another way, the default D&D assumption appears to be that adventuring is a lifestyle choice: You abandon the tasks of daily living and regular social interaction in order to travel to weird exotic locations and face down death on a regular basis, and in return you amass huge amounts of power and wealth (which, oddly, you then use to go back out and face down death again). It seems to me that adventurers are the Lancelots and Galahads of the world: Champions and wanderers, but not rulers. _Retired_ adventurers, however, have quite the perfect set of skills to run a kingdom, which is why I'd have to say (and FR, for one, agrees) that retired adventurers and similar high-level folk are likely to be the ones running kingdoms.



My point exactly.

And thus, the Rules Lawyer has spoken.  The issue is put to rest.


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## kigmatzomat (Jun 5, 2006)

ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> A high-level rogue or bard, or any high-level adventurer with appropriate items, will open a big can of whup@$$ on such pathetic skill checks.




Bards and rogues do have the skill potential to rule.  Of course, I don't see either of them ruling by force.  Both are still too soft to not be put down by poison or ye olde hail of arrows from afar.  As for "appropriate items," that goes for anyone, doesn't it?  Had Mike Tyson a Ring of Diplomacy +10, an amulet of Charisma+6, and a headband of Intellect +4 and he'll give Jesse Jackson a run for his money.  



> They really are the best candidates for rulership; they can negotiate better, they know more (Knowledge skill ranks: go!), they are virtually immune to attempts at assassination, poisoning, or ensorcelment, they can travel the length and breadth of their kingdom in a day, and they have the ability to quite literally charm the socks off whomever they want.




With access to magic items, so can everyone.  Rulers tend to be quite wealthy ergo they can afford magic items.  The question is, who ends up ruling?   

Let's say that an adventurer carves out a kingdom.   Through his dominion he ensures few heroes exist and the ones that do are crushed quickly or rewarded with cushy properties far from any adventures. He has kids and grows old.    Does he a) throw his crown in the gladiatorial ring as prize for the strongest or b) establish an organization that will protect his offspring so they can rule?  

A) will likely result in chaos as the new warrior-king is unlikely to have the management skills.  Plus, his kids could quite likely win if they use his toys or use his wealth to buy their own  even if they aren't the strongest in the land (amazing how dangerous a 3rd level punk kid is when given the equipment of a 15th level adventurer).    

B) will mean that you have non-adventurers on the throne and an army with bodyguards that was designed _by_ an adventurer to _stop_ adventurers.  

So ultimately you will wind up with non-adventurers on the thrones in just a few short generations.  This has occurred in our history (e.g.  English King Henry II to King John, Spain's King Ferdinand the Great to Philip the II) where an accomplished ruler with military skill gives way to soft children.  

The fact is that succession wars reduce the wealth of a region, causing other adventurer-types to throw their lot in on the side of stability.  Wizards have trouble studying and researching during war, bards' art is often ignored when the masses fear being gutted, and rogues like having rich, content people to fleece.   Fighters like having reliable sources for weapons, armor, food, drink, and (ahem) entertainment; war makes all of them uncertain.  

Plus, when the original warlord is a competent ruler who has the ability to gain a solid following (Leadership) his influence will be transferred, at least temporarily, to his offspring out of habit.  "His dad's a good ruler, his son will have had plenty of opportunity to learn from the best!"  It goes double if the warlord ruled a long time (30+ years) as there will be entire generations who grew up under his rule and will be programmed by his party line.   

So the entropic evaluation of rulership is that non-adventurers will rule more often than adventurers.  Especially once smart non-adventuring rulers figure out ways to manipulate the society so that only villainous adventurer types will consider it possible to become ruler.  And you can't stop them from considering it but if you've got enough brain-washed heroes who uphold "King and Country" you can probably keep them from trying it.


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## The Grumpy Celt (Jun 5, 2006)

I think it is interesting the way society turns around and twists inside out. Granted, D&D is not a social leader. However, like all “art” it can be taken as something of social indicator, a reflection of a significant portion of social mores.

At some point in the last decade or so, democracy has become a vice – or at least a sign of sentimental weakness – while pursuing totalitarian power has become a virtue – or at least practical.

Egalitarianism has become childish while a take-the-money-and-run, along side a kill-them-all mentality has become the rule of the day. The down trodden are no longer championed, but now exploiting them has become both the path to success and virtuous.

I wonder when that happened.

(And people wonder why I'm grumpy)


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## Imp (Jun 5, 2006)

a few more thoughts:

- you guys are still not considering the clerics in your calculations.  Fighters, rogues, wizards, blahblahblah.  Consider the clerics!  They are going to be either the prime power or directly behind the prime power in all your D&D RAW campaign worlds.  (I have various mitigating circumstances that knock them down a few pegs in my homebrew, but...)  Everybody else _needs_ them.  And of all the classes they're the most likely to have a vested interest in what the social order looks like.

- if monsters are more prevalent, human/ humanoid society will be a lot less strife-torn, as attention is focused on outside threats.  It's likely in particularly besieged (but not powerless) societies that adventurers _will_ rule, but they won't kill each other to do it – they need everyone they have to fend off the giants, you know!  Probably some sort of trial by combat.

- but, the strife and turnover caused by high-level characters getting ambitious does a lot to explain the millenia of technological stagnation common to a lot of settings, doesn't it?

- it is also possible (reading The Grumpy Celt's comment) that adventurers in general would be interested in upholding the basic social order in a large-scale D&D democracy.  After all, it's a pretty good way to live, and they wouldn't have to worry about attacks from the government at least (or at least not as much.)  In my setting, there was a massive, bitter war several hundred years ago where large numbers of high-level heroes ran amok when their various alliances triggered - think World War I - causing a great deal of death... so people are aware of the dangers of heroes.  There's more to it than that, but there could be reasons people would prefer a more egalitarian form of government.

- it's also certainly possible to structure a D&D democracy along ancient Greek lines: only adventurers are citizens!  You have to prove your skill at arms or the like to gain a seat in the assembly.  In this scenario there'd probably be a lot of ad hoc alliances and churn and intermittent dictatorships in the Athenian sense.

- but the reason for _my_ discounting of democracy as a likely state for a D&D nation has to do with the direct presence of the divine.  I suppose you could have voting be a tenet of the major religion, but otherwise...


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## Deuce Traveler (Jun 5, 2006)

Someone said:
			
		

> It´s obviously possible for a powerful individual to teleport into the throne room, kill the guards in twelve seconds, assesinate the royal family, and coerce thr court into obeying him. But we all know what happens then: a baby is miraculously rescued from the castle and given to a peasant family in adoption, and grows into a honorable and healthy, if somewhat naïve, man. He then learns about his past (an event frequently involving an old man, family heirloom or birthmark), learns the arts of war and starts a quest to get his throne back.
> 
> So, seizing the throne by force is like putting a death sentence on you, only delayed 18 years. That´s why adventurers stay away from thrones.




So far I like this theory the best.


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## SWBaxter (Jun 5, 2006)

Kragar00 said:
			
		

> I don't think it is necessarily personal power, but rather experience.... The more you've been around and know, the better you are at overcoming obstacles.... That's why there are NPC classes like the aristocrat and commoner... these people don't face dragons to gain experience... the do their jobs (whatever that may be).... They can gain the levels to get all those skill ranks and feats.....




In D&D (unlike the real world), experience maps directly to personal power. If you're following the rules as written, the only way to increase your Diplomacy (and Profession: Noble Despot, etc.) skills is to level up, and levelling up in any class (even the NPC classes) means you have more hit points, better saving throws, and eventually a higher BAB. Your personal power has increased. That's the way D&D works, that's what we have to deal with in order to think about how a world that strictly follows D&D rules would differ from ours.

The thought experiments about a first level expert or aristocrat or whatever cherry-picking feats and such to get a high skill check are kind of silly, because all they mean is that somebody following the same strategy but one level higher will have an advantage, and somebody five levels higher will have a significant advantage. Hence the higher level types will still rule, saying "but wait, it's only higher level types with _Skill Focus: Diplomacy_" doesn't change the basic fact that levels are going to be what matters. 

I don't believe this means that every campaign should dump the pseudo-historical government systems, IMHO the most useful aspect of this kind of thinking is to identify the point(s) at which a given campaign setting is making changes to the most likely implications of the D&D rules. This allows a DM to anticipate questions the players might ask, and also to work out why exactly things developed differently. This sort of critical thinking can only help to flesh out a setting.


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## Hussar (Jun 5, 2006)

I think the biggest thing people are forgetting in this discussion is not the existence of the divine, but the existence of numerous creatures that are FAR more intelligent and longer lived than anyone else.  Dragons come to mind, but, then again, dragons are so bloody big that it would be difficult to think why they would bother running a kingdom.  Far more peace of mind to simply eat people and go back to sleep on that bed of gold.  

But, there are any number of creatures out there that, without any class levels, would make pretty intense rulers.  Yuan-Ti, Aranea, Dopplegangers, Rakshasa, heck, possibly even Treants would all make fairly decent rulers.  Highly intelligent and very powerful.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 5, 2006)

You don't have to be the toughest fighter in the realm to rule.

However, you probably have to have the highest Profession: King skill.

Of course, this is all relative to the power level of the rest of the realm. If the PC's are unique exceptions and 90% of the world are dirt farmers, things are a bit easier for your low-level aristocrat. You really don't have to have that high of a Profession: King skill to rule over dirt farms.

So the petty lord of the plague swamp probably isn't an epic-level paladin, but the High King of the Dwarves may very well be.


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## Aust Diamondew (Jun 5, 2006)

Adventures don't like rulling over dirt farmers either.  I think the key is to find your niche.


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## ruleslawyer (Jun 5, 2006)

kigmatzomat said:
			
		

> Bards and rogues do have the skill potential to rule.  Of course, I don't see either of them ruling by force.  Both are still too soft to not be put down by poison or ye olde hail of arrows from afar.



Not compared to a mid-level aristocrat, they aren't! 


> _As for "appropriate items," that goes for anyone, doesn't it?  Had Mike Tyson a Ring of Diplomacy +10, an amulet of Charisma+6, and a headband of Intellect +4 and he'll give Jesse Jackson a run for his money._



True, but those items work _even better_ in the hands of a high-level PC-class character with the appropriate skills.  


> _With access to magic items, so can everyone.  Rulers tend to be quite wealthy ergo they can afford magic items.  The question is, who ends up ruling?_



Well, according to the wealth by level guidelines and the minimum power necessary to make the things in the first place, only high-level PCs really should have such stuff. In any event, a more skilled character still experiences an incremental gain in using such items; compare Mike Tyson with that stuff to Malcolm X with it.   


> _Let's say that an adventurer carves out a kingdom.   Through his dominion he ensures few heroes exist and the ones that do are crushed quickly or rewarded with cushy properties far from any adventures. He has kids and grows old.    Does he a) throw his crown in the gladiatorial ring as prize for the strongest or b) establish an organization that will protect his offspring so they can rule?
> 
> SNIP_



Ah! Now *this* is where it gets interesting, and I agree with you 100%.  
Adventurers can _found_ dynasties, but ultimately it's their children who have to carry them on. (Of course, if the adventurer has access to life-extending magic, that's not necessarily the case; he could be an undying god-king presiding over his people for millenia.) 

So yeah, an adventurer's descendants (probably aristocrats) will end up being the ones to rule... until some evil warlord or wizard PC shows up, slays the royal family, and seizes the throne until the Chosen One comes forth to reclaim it for its rightful rulers.


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## drothgery (Jun 5, 2006)

ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> So yeah, an adventurer's descendants (probably aristocrats) will end up being the ones to rule...




"Look, son, I don't care if you don't want to practice swordwork. Your mother and I got this throne by destroying the lich-king a few years after he turned the old royal family into zombies, and we don't want that happening to you. Understand?"


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## kigmatzomat (Jun 5, 2006)

Yup, warrior-kings tend to have warrior offspring.  Unfortunately, some of them die while waging war (Philip of Macedonia -> Alexandar the Great) while others suck at waging war (Henry VIII's son was sickly and died from a disease caught playing _tennis_).  

Aristocrats really isn't a bad class.  Rogue BAB, decent weapon & armor profs, reasonable hit points and a wide skill selection.  All it lacks is the "specials" of a PC class.   IMC many of the common "gentleman adventurers" are 3-4th level aristocrats; the 4th or 5th sons of minor lordlings who are tough enough to be a challenge and still smooth and suave.  They also make decent company-level commanders, if they spend some points on Profession:Military (or the equivalent).


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## ruleslawyer (Jun 5, 2006)

Well, I'm assuming there are metasetting reasons as to why princes and lordlings are aristocrats as opposed to bards, clerics, paladins, or rogues, since if not, I can't see why a king wouldn't want all of his offspring trained as one of those classes. My assumptions have always been as follows (of course, I play Iron Heroes these days):

1) Not everyone is cut out to be an adventurer. Only certain individuals blessed with the right combination of heredity, temperament, and plain luck can be PC-classed characters. Everyone else is an NPC.

2) NPC-classed individuals advance in level for different reasons than do PC-classed individuals. Running a kingdom may net Arthur the Aristocrat some class levels, but Furnald the Fighter is unlikely to gain anything unless he constantly engages in battles. This also means that the kinds of pursuits required for adventurers to gain levels are far too hazardous for ordinary folk to pursue and tend to "cull the ranks" a bit.

In my old (epic-level) campaign, the player of the baron PC (a wizard) rolled his sons' ability scores, and is trying to train his two sons to be a wizard (high Int) and a bard (high, well, everything) respectively. I've thus had to grapple with this problem rather immediately. My sense is, though, that any ruler with the choice will train his son to be a bard or rogue rather than an aristocrat; the question is whether that element of metagame choice is present in the setting.


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## kigmatzomat (Jun 5, 2006)

You're also forgetting choice and aptitude.  Lordlings have to have a relatively strong will if they are going to rule and may fight their parents.  Lordlings may also not have the aptitutde to either master the supposedly elite path of the adventurer.  

The aristocrat is the best of the NPC classes as it mixes education with combat training.  Barring those with exceptional traits suitable for PC classes, aristocrats are significantly superior to the other unexceptional individuals.


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## The Grumpy Celt (Jun 6, 2006)

I still find it interesting that so many play heroes idealizing oligarchies and autocracies and disparaging democracies and republics. It is a disappointing statement about our society tat even if we don’t admit it, we are in our games now seeking to emulate Stalin, rather than Churchill.

Turmish, in the Forgotten Realms, is depicted as a functional democracy. There may be other examples of democracies in various settings, but I am not aware of them. In any event, at least one such nation exists.

In any event, the fetishistic attitude towards autocracy is amply demonstrated by all the smallish nation-states and city states that litter (one could argue clutter) most traditional fantasy settings, as compared to larger nations or empires.

That said, a more plausible system would see some potent Oligarchy form, ruled and driven by various powers, none of which were able to eliminate the others, similar to the government that developed in England following the signing of the Magna Carta. For example, a handful of wizards, clerics and fighters work together – more or less – to protect their interests more effectively together than they could do so alone. This is not a democracy and is confused for one only by the ignorant.

A good case could be made that the lack of empires is a flaw in most campaign settings. There is, to my mind, nothing like a fantasy version of the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Empire, the Empire of Alexander, the British Empire or the Frankish Empire. The few that do exist are usually evil, like the Empire of Iuz. 

Instead a grab bag of petty tyrannies are presented, which the people pretending to be heroes eat up like candy.

This, of course, does not include chaotic and evil groups, which going to be governed by ochlocracies or anarchism.

However, even with the addition of rules for ruling, such as those found in _Empire_, _Fields of Blood_ and _Power of Faerun_, D&D is at heart a system of rules for governing lethal combat as the only means for adjudicating intrapersonal differences of any sort. Dickering over nations ruled by fighters, wizards, archwizards is all besides the point and a waste of time, as all the rules they have are for killing, not ruling a fiefdom.


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## ruleslawyer (Jun 6, 2006)

kigmatzomat said:
			
		

> You're also forgetting choice and aptitude.



"Forgetting"? My entire post was about choice and aptitude, I thought.


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## Hussar (Jun 6, 2006)

> I still find it interesting that so many play heroes idealizing oligarchies and autocracies and disparaging democracies and republics. It is a disappointing statement about our society tat even if we don’t admit it, we are in our games now seeking to emulate Stalin, rather than Churchill.
> 
> Turmish, in the Forgotten Realms, is depicted as a functional democracy. There may be other examples of democracies in various settings, but I am not aware of them. In any event, at least one such nation exists.
> 
> In any event, the fetishistic attitude towards autocracy is amply demonstrated by all the smallish nation-states and city states that litter (one could argue clutter) most traditional fantasy settings, as compared to larger nations or empires.




Well, it could quite possibly be that democracy, at least any modern definition of the word, would be unbelievably anachronistic in a fantasy setting.  You don't find democracy until well after medieval times.  Yes, Greece was democratic.  As long as you were male, owned land, not a slave, and were a citizen.  That's not exactly democracy as it is usually envisioned.  

The reason democracy isn't thought of in fantasy settings is two fold.  One, kings are sexy.  Being able to rescue the princess and win the kingdom is one of the oldest conceits of the genre.  Secondly, feudalism WORKS.  In a setting where you have a small group of people who are vastly more powerful than the majority, why on earth would you see democracy?

How could there possibly be any talk of equality among people when A) your neighbour can raise up an army of zombies and B) your other neighbour has been appointed by a GOD to do X and Y and C) it is virtually impossible to define what would be considered a person in a DND setting in the first place?


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## Squire James (Jun 6, 2006)

Actually, when the United States was founded, they used exactly the same criteria (male, not slave, owned land, citizen) that the Greeks did.  It was only later, after one non-belonging class ceased to exist and two others gained enough persuasive power to change the law, that we have democracy as we see it today.  One could even argue that the last remaining non-belonging group is gaining momentum, but that way lie Dragons and Irate Moderators...


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## fusangite (Jun 6, 2006)

First of all, as others have said, "Yay! He's back."

With that out of the way, my feeling is that D&D's geometric power increases are one of the things that actually makes it more suitable for a faux-medieval gaming. Medievals perceived greatness in battle in much the way D&D models it. Medieval legends and stories share with modern Chinese wire-fu films a tendency to depict individuals or small groups winning battles, holding passes, slaying hundreds. Even within their supposedly Christian framework, medieval magic stories also have this attribute with some priests having the power to find lost shovels while other, more powerful saints can command fire. (Yes. Martin of Tours could cast Flame Strike, it seems.) 

So, I see the rules making D&D societies hyper-feudal. Even more so than real medievals, the primary political motivation of people choosing a ruler will be desire for protection. Even more so than in real feudalism, the ability to avoid being killed will be valued in D&D worlds in that, with the hit point mechanic, there will be big measurable differences in how much damage people can endure. Despotisms and democracies would be tough to maintain in a D&D world, as would any social system whose organization was too flat. I think what we'd end up with is medieval-style pyramidal authority but with the sides steeper.


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## fusangite (Jun 6, 2006)

Squire James said:
			
		

> Actually, when the United States was founded, they used exactly the same criteria (male, not slave, owned land, citizen) that the Greeks did.



Except that land was not as directly transferable in Athens. It was not simply a matter of moving fee simple title around.







			
				Hussar said:
			
		

> You don't find democracy until well after medieval times.



But you do find Republican governance systems like Novgorod, Venice and some other Italian states. Such a system would be harder to sustain in D&D, though. D&D's default system is more likely early medieval feudalism when governments were essentially protection rackets, and for good reason.







			
				Grumpy Celt said:
			
		

> I still find it interesting that so many play heroes idealizing oligarchies and autocracies and disparaging democracies and republics.



That's because fantasy literature is about an archetypal and idealized past. The fact is that, aside from republican Rome, most of the myths and stories of heroism are set in aristocratic times and places. Courtly love, knighthood -- these are the social forms around which our literary traditions have formed. 

One would be hard-pressed to find a lot of stories about heroism and love in medieval or ancient republics, aside from early Rome. And because we tend to see our idealized past as medieval rather than antique, Roman heroism doesn't get much coverage. I think another factor is that medieval republics tended to exert power through trade rather than force. Venice and Novgorod rose to greatness through commercial acumen not strength in arms; and unfortunately commercial success is just not as good reading as military success is. To go a little further, I think episodes like the sack of Constantinople tend to remind us of the venal, plundering aspects of modern capitalism -- something that by both evoking modernity and mild disgust, are unattractive.







> It is a disappointing statement about our society tat even if we don’t admit it, we are in our games now seeking to emulate Stalin, rather than Churchill.



I don't think D&D emulates autocracy especially well. I think despotism is as rare in narrative terms and as contra-indicated by the actual rules of the game as democracy is. D&D is more likely to have kings and lords as opposed to the despots, service gentry and bureaucrats that characterize autocratic systems.







> In any event, the fetishistic attitude towards autocracy is amply demonstrated by all the smallish nation-states and city states that litter (one could argue clutter) most traditional fantasy settings, as compared to larger nations or empires.



I must concede I'm not very well-read when it comes to setting materials but I had assumed that they were generally describing a feudal rather than an autocratic order.







> A good case could be made that the lack of empires is a flaw in most campaign settings. There is, to my mind, nothing like a fantasy version of the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Empire, the Empire of Alexander, the British Empire or the Frankish Empire.
> 
> Instead a grab bag of petty tyrannies are presented, which the people pretending to be heroes eat up like candy.



That's really disappointing to hear. Glad I don't blow money on setting books.







			
				Aust Diamondew said:
			
		

> Adventures don't like rulling over dirt farmers either.



Retired adventurers might. The first generation of feudal nobility tended to be just these types -- people with little aptitude or training in politics being rewarded for (or just taking payment for) martial service.







			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> You don't have to be the toughest fighter in the realm to rule.
> 
> However, you probably have to have the highest Profession: King skill.



Yes. But a flaw in most political systems, including the one we have today, is that the skills you need to get the job are not the skills you need to do the job.







			
				Ruleslawyer said:
			
		

> I'd say that in the world of D&D, the only reason why high-level characters wouldn't dominate everything is if they didn't want to. Put another way, the default D&D assumption appears to be that adventuring is a lifestyle choice: You abandon the tasks of daily living and regular social interaction in order to travel to weird exotic locations and face down death on a regular basis, and in return you amass huge amounts of power and wealth (which, oddly, you then use to go back out and face down death again). It seems to me that adventurers are the Lancelots and Galahads of the world: Champions and wanderers, but not rulers. Retired adventurers, however, have quite the perfect set of skills to run a kingdom, which is why I'd have to say (and FR, for one, agrees) that retired adventurers and similar high-level folk are likely to be the ones running kingdoms.



I have nothing to add here. Ruleslawyer's post is just so great it bears repeating again.

Do remember that there is the other kind of adventurer, though: those who, despite their power can't run anything to save their lives because they are violent, unstable, binge-drinking fools who, regardless what titles are given them will find a way to spend their time exclusively on drinking, whoring and fighting.


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## Moonstone Spider (Jun 6, 2006)

I wonder if DnD mechanics would lead to a leadership system similar to Mortal Kombat?  The big bad guy is obviously the highest level (And toughest fighter) while he's got a handful of generals who are almost as high a level to back him up.  Leadership is determined by stylized duals.

And in the hideously bad Annihilation movie the Emperor appeared to be conquering the earth with around a hundred mooks and a dozen or so generals.  All of them basically unarmed.  Obviously they had to be very high level to be pulling that off against the modern world.


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## ruleslawyer (Jun 6, 2006)

Great post, fusangite! I think we sometimes forget how much default D&D government is based around Western fantasy literature, which in turn is based around an idealized feudal past. 

Just wanted to note something for those of you bemoaning the lack of non-aristocratic systems of government (and the lack of empires) in D&D settings: FR (the setting I know best) actually has a huge number of these sorts of government. AFAICT, the Realms has only one medieval-style kingdom (Cormyr); the rest run as follows:

-Theocratic empire (Mulhorand)
-Magocracy (Thay and Halruaa, although the practical implications range from an autocracy in Thay's case to a near-republican system in Halruaa's)
-Plutocracy (Amn, Sembian city-states)
-Republic(s) (the Dalelands)
-Democracy (Melvaunt, Thentia, Elventree)

etc. There's a bewildering assortment of governmental mechanisms in the Realms, most of which resemble the premodern states of Venice or Iceland rather than, say, medieval France. 

The Realms also has a tradition of imperial government, although the setting materials rather clearly state that this is largely an artifact of the past that has given way to a new type of empire based around mercantile concerns (sound familiar?)


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 6, 2006)

> Yes. But a flaw in most political systems, including the one we have today, is that the skills you need to get the job are not the skills you need to do the job.




Well, rulers come in a lot of forms, too. Warrior-kings were often set up in a binary system between them and the clergy of the national faith. You can't rule on strength of arms alone, you need someone to keep the daily life in line. Arguably, the high priest actually *led* the country, while the king was off defending it in such a system. 

So, in that example, the high priest would be the one with the highest Profession: King skill. He'd just be handling all the daily runnings of the realm in the background while Korgath of Barbaria rampaged around the countryside killing their enemies. High-level adventurers could off Korgath and become warrior-kings themselves, but they'd be off having adventures to defend the nation, not doing the daily drudgery of kingly duties for the most part. Unless, of course, they could out-Profession:King the High Priest.

Even in D&D, personal power comes in many different stripes. High levels give some universal benefits, but many that are specific to the character's choices as they gain those levels. SOMEONE probably has the power, at least in a well-functioning kingdom, to actually perform the daily mundanities required of a leader.

Though my issue with Dirt Farms was really to show that you don't need to be high level absolutely, just of *comparatively* high level. If you're the only 3rd level aristocrat in the swamp, you may very well be Grand High Poobah, even if the country next door is lead by a 40th level Paragon Human Ninja. 'course, there's no telling how long you'll be in that position next to such power. It's really an issue of how common those higher levels are. If the PC's are unique and nothing other than monsters and villains have their level of power, then, in general, kingdoms won't be ruled by PC's (though they may certainly rule their own). The "Adventurer Class" may take up ruling, or they may not, depending on their whim (bards, for one, generally aren't depicted as the responsible type). If there is a kind of "Adventurer Caste" in the campaign world (as normal D&D assumes), it's reasonable to assume that, depending on how common they are, that they will often be in positions of power. But that power isn't really absolute, either. A warrior-king is nothing without the high priest's blessing.


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## Imp (Jun 6, 2006)

The Grumpy Celt said:
			
		

> I still find it interesting that so many play heroes idealizing oligarchies and autocracies and disparaging democracies and republics. It is a disappointing statement about our society tat even if we don’t admit it, we are in our games now seeking to emulate Stalin, rather than Churchill.



I think one thing you're overlooking is that the curse "may you live in interesting times" is a recipe for fun in an RPG.  Struggling to overthrow a tyrannical king, carving out your own land to rule, and triumphing over the iniquity of aristocrats, this is the stuff of fantasy heroism and it's pretty much always been.  I'm not sure there's ever been much of any adventures about bringing democracy to the drow. 

(I'm pretty sure there was a fantasy empire or two in the setting that came with the old Basic D&D boxes...)


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## fusangite (Jun 7, 2006)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Well, rulers come in a lot of forms, too. Warrior-kings were often set up in a binary system between them and the clergy of the national faith. You can't rule on strength of arms alone, you need someone to keep the daily life in line. Arguably, the high priest actually *led* the country, while the king was off defending it in such a system.



Can you give me an example? In ancient Judea, the offices were fused, of course. In polytheistic systems, there simply is not enough power concentrated in a single cult to pull this off. In Orthodox Christianity, there were rare episodes that usually abruptly ended with a smackdown of the Patriarch (e.g. Photius, Nikon). In the Islamic world, this was not really the way the Sultan-Caliph balance worked either, though I am decidedly less familiar with this history and am happy to be corrected. 

Ultimately, though, D&D worlds are polytheistic and that's what we're talking about. In such a model, I cannot imagine how one cult could simultaneously grab all that civil authority while simultaneously gaining dominance over all others. 







> So, in that example, the high priest would be the one with the highest Profession: King skill.



I think the role you are talking about is that of a mandarin, not a high priest. Councilors, mandarins and other members of court might carry out these tasks on behalf of a king, sure. But I would caution that the way D&D appears to work makes it hard to sustain a bureaucratic despotism along the lines of imperial China, Byzantium, Russia, etc. precisely because in a contest between sound administration and a lot of fireballs, the sound administrator is not very well-advantaged. Remember, also that a Profession (Mandarin) skill cannot substitute for charisma-based skills and feats. The fact that your orders have a better track record can only adjust the DC against which the aspiring despot paladin needs to roll.







> A warrior-king is nothing without the high priest's blessing.



Sorry but I do not buy your theory. Furnish me with some real world examples or some sound sociological theory backing this up.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 8, 2006)

> Sorry but I do not buy your theory. Furnish me with some real world examples or some sound sociological theory backing this up.




I don't think it's nessecary, I think we're largely talking about the same thing: One needs more skill than a single person (or character) has in order to successfully run a long-lasting political system beyond that one character. You need institutions, and the skills to set up, run, and govern those institutions aren't always in the hands of the charismatic leader that the people want to follow, or the man who comes in and slays the dragon. 

One person doesn't rule. Organizations, institutions, and systems rule. The Throne rules. The King is just the current guy upon it. 



> Ultimately, though, D&D worlds are polytheistic and that's what we're talking about. In such a model, I cannot imagine how one cult could simultaneously grab all that civil authority while simultaneously gaining dominance over all others




Viewing polytheism as a collection of cults is rather inaccurate, though. It's more that the institution of the faith or governance (and those at the head of the institution) are arguably more nessecary for the operation of a kingdom than the king. All the "cults" really work as one whole rather than compete with each other for the most part, as far as the enduring institutions are concerned.

Though D&D-ized polytheism isn't like most human polytheisms in this regard, the idea that the institution is greater than the individual still works with comptetative polytheism. It merely means that the locally dominant institution (church of Pelor, church of Hextor, whatever's good in the local region) is what needs to be won over.

So if the institution is more important, then the outsiders (adventurers) will still be unlikely to rule it, because they don't have the propper connections and channels within the instititution. The power of rulership is the power to get those you rule to do what you want willingly. The hand that slew 1,000 goblins single-handedly may get to sit on the richly bejeweled throne, but it takes more rulership power ("Profession: King skill") to procure a richly bejeweled throne and invest it with sacred significance than it takes to slay 1,000 goblins by yourself.

And that's why adventurers don't rule the world, in general. They are outsiders, and while they may do heroic things of legendary significance, they don't often know the intricate details of the courtly melieu like an aristocrat might. They know how to kill 1,000 goblins, they may have the Cleave feat, but I don't see many adventurers taking the Skill Focus (Political Manuevering) feat unless they ALSO make good institutional rulers. 

The "real rulers", the ones behind the throne, are the ones who can get the job done. They are the manipulaters of our institutions (which include religious overtones, even today), the ones who can change our daily lives, the ones who make us believe that the system works. They aren't the guy who kills 1,000 orcs, they're the guy who knows that because of the lack of rain the fields will yeild low and that people will appreciate moves to stock up on food for the cold winter ahead. While an adventurer could know that, those that do tend to not last very long when confronted by 1,000 orcs. Thus, you have NPC's who know the system at the head of it, as the builders of the throne, allowing powerful adventurers to sit uppon it. Power isn't in sitting on the throne, it's in working a nation so that sitting on a simple wooden chair is an event worthy of note.


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## Agback (Jun 8, 2006)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Well, it could quite possibly be that democracy, at least any modern definition of the word, would be unbelievably anachronistic in a fantasy setting.  You don't find democracy until well after medieval times.  Yes, Greece was democratic.  As long as you were male, owned land, not a slave, and were a citizen.  That's not exactly democracy as it is usually envisioned.




It was good enough in most places up until the 1920s.



> Secondly, feudalism WORKS.




If the objective is to produce near-constant civil war, I guess it does.


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## Agback (Jun 8, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> But you do find Republican governance systems like Novgorod, Venice and some other Italian states.




Also in many city-states in the Languedoc (South of France) before the Albigensian Crusade / French conquest 1208-1228.


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## fusangite (Jun 8, 2006)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> One person doesn't rule. Organizations, institutions, and systems rule. The Throne rules. The King is just the current guy upon it.



Personal rather than bureaucratic governance has been the rule through most of human history. Your idea that bureaucratic rule, based on the rule of law is typical of how pre-modern socieites have been governed is not accurate. Feudal governance, what we are talking about here, is largely personal in character. The throne rules when there is a militarily powerful, forceful personality on the throne; when such an individual isn't there, governance is largely local; the role of the king recedes into the background.

While despotic states (as opposed to feudal states) have tended to build institutions national institutions with more life to them like the Byzantine and Chinese bureaucracies, the case I am making here is that because of the even greater inequality of power in D&D worlds, relatively flat organizations like despotic states are much less likely to arise.







> Viewing polytheism as a collection of cults is rather inaccurate, though.



On what basis do you make this claim?







> It's more that the institution of the faith or governance (and those at the head of the institution) are arguably more nessecary for the operation of a kingdom than the king.



Except in Indian polytheism, there is no general "faith" in a polytheistic society. What you get in polytheisms are competing philosophies with different ideas about what the cosmological system means. In ancient Rome, Platonists, Aristotelians, Pythagoreans, Epicureans and Stoics competed for the role of defining the overarching social, moral and metaphysical system that the universal belief in the gods entailed. Similarly, in China, Buddhists, Confucians and Taoists competed for this role. Even in India, where the Brahmin caste existed and Vedic thought had a special place in defining the social order, Vedic thought nevertheless competed with Sikhism, Janism, Buddhism, etc.

I think you have an incorrect idea of what polytheism looks like on the ground. I see nothing in the D&D rules saying that polytheism works the way it did in India; I am therefore inclined to see it working as it has everywhere else. 

So, what institution are you talking about?







> All the "cults" really work as one whole rather than compete with each other for the most part, as far as the enduring institutions are concerned.



Again, you misunderstand polytheism. The cults don't work together. They share assumptions. This is like saying that in a capitalist society, corporations don't compete with eachother. Corporations operate within a shared understanding and economic environment; this should not be construed as cooperation.

Also, what institutions are you talking about?







> Though D&D-ized polytheism isn't like most human polytheisms in this regard, the idea that the institution is greater than the individual still works with comptetative polytheism.



What institution are you talking about?







> So if the institution is more important, then the outsiders (adventurers) will still be unlikely to rule it, because they don't have the propper connections and channels within the instititution.



But you are assuming static, stable institutions. I think this may be because you conflate a system being stable with the institutions within it being stable. To do so is to misunderstand feudalism.







> The power of rulership is the power to get those you rule to do what you want willingly.



Since when!? Again, you are acting as though the way government works in the 21st century can be helpfully generalized to the past.







> The hand that slew 1,000 goblins single-handedly may get to sit on the richly bejeweled throne, but it takes more rulership power ("Profession: King skill") to procure a richly bejeweled throne and invest it with sacred significance than it takes to slay 1,000 goblins by yourself.



Make a game mechanical argument for why this should be true.







> but I don't see many adventurers taking the Skill Focus (Political Manuevering) feat unless they ALSO make good institutional rulers.



How is this skill focus necessary to convince the court that you can kill them all in 12 seconds? All this skill focus would do is confer +3 to a diplomacy check or whatever. In my view, the circumstance bonus conferred by killing people to such checks would be decidedly larger.







> The "real rulers", the ones behind the throne,



These people are the real rulers some of the time. Not all of the time. And this depends on circumstances.







> are the ones who can get the job done. They are the manipulaters of our institutions (which include religious overtones, even today), the ones who can change our daily lives, the ones who make us believe that the system works.



But government by stable bureaucratic institutions based on the rule of law is an incredibly recent development.


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## fusangite (Jun 8, 2006)

Agback said:
			
		

> If the objective is to produce near-constant civil war, I guess it does.



Explain how a system other than feudalism could have yielded a more peaceful, safe place in early medieval Europe than vassalage was able to. 

The feudal system was the best option given the historical and physical conditions in effect at the time.


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## Hussar (Jun 8, 2006)

Agback, I would also point to 300 years of peaceful existence in Feudal Japan during the Edo period as a pretty decent example of Feudalism at work.

The near constant civil war was primarily due to a lack of codified rules for inheritance.  It was fairly late before dynastic thrones were founded in Europe.  When there is no clear rules for who gets to sit on the throne next, then you get instability.

As far as early forms of democracy, well, I would point out that it's much closer to Oligarchy than democracy when you limit voting to very small groups of wealthy people.  Not many people would consider Greece to be truly democratic.  

Just to step into metagame for a second.  How could you possibly make democracy work if DnD physics existed?  We know for a fact that people are not equal in a DnD setting.  A 10th level character truly IS better than a 1st level one.  The other major impediment to democracy would be determining what constitutes a person.  In other words, should a wizard's familiar get a vote?  How about a paladin's warhorse?  

Ok, that's facetious.  But, the point is still true.  How would a state possibly determine what constitutes a person in a fantasy setting?


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 9, 2006)

> Personal rather than bureaucratic governance has been the rule through most of human history. Your idea that bureaucratic rule, based on the rule of law is typical of how pre-modern socieites have been governed is not accurate. Feudal governance, what we are talking about here, is largely personal in character. The throne rules when there is a militarily powerful, forceful personality on the throne; when such an individual isn't there, governance is largely local; the role of the king recedes into the background.




The power of rulership is exemplified by the ability to get people to do things because you said so. Those who have military power already have that ability (they got an army to follow them), those who have "forceful personalities" are able to gain that power by virtue of such. But just being charismatic or strong by yourself doesn't do anything for your power. You have to be able to manipulate others, and when you manipulate others, you form a system of governance, and that system of governance outlasts your personal power, or your empire dies with you.

The kings may have been more or less influential depending upon how good they were at manipulating the institutions, but the very fact that they could be called Feudal Kings shows that it was the institution of feudal kingship that ruled the people, not the individual kings. Their devotion lied toward the office, not toward the individual, which is well-shown in your example: when the king wasn't a successful ideologue, they didn't get a new king, but rather had more powerful local idealogues take the center stage without disrupting the overall system. The Kingship lasted, and those who gave the Kingship power (the local lords, the church) obviously were able to wield more power as a whole than the one guy on the throne.



> On what basis do you make this claim?




The practice of polytheism isn't the practice of choosing one god over another in a world full of gods, but rather devoting oneself to the correct gods for the job. There were never Priests of Odin and Priests of Thor, there were kings and warriors who paid them both devotion when either was due it. The polytheisms that break this rule tended to be not one religious system, but many shoehorned together by an empire, nation, or tradition (such as Egyptian polytheism, with it's heavy geographical influence). I make this claim based on what polytheism is for those who practice it, which is not just a bunch of competing monotheisms, but rather one system for dealing with the supernatural world (which is part of why conversion to monotheism is often seen as easy -- polytheism easily accomodates new spirits). The image that comes instantly to mind is the Patamuna. They may have competing shamans, but each type serves a different role in the community that the community as a whole accepts as the real way to deal with the spirit world. 



> In ancient Rome, Platonists, Aristotelians, Pythagoreans, Epicureans and Stoics competed for the role of defining the overarching social, moral and metaphysical system that the universal belief in the gods entailed. Similarly, in China, Buddhists, Confucians and Taoists competed for this role. Even in India, where the Brahmin caste existed and Vedic thought had a special place in defining the social order, Vedic thought nevertheless competed with Sikhism, Janism, Buddhism, etc.




Platonism isn't polytheism, though, and neither are (most kinds of) Buddhism, Confucianism, or Taosism. In fact, many of those Roman and Chinese philosophies lacked any kind of real theism at all, being more concerned with a moral guidance than the world of the unseen. These philosophical systems absolutely competed, because their ideological control is key, but that's no different from the myriad Christian sects or the sweeping variety of ways to run an _umma_ correctly, or the different ways of practacing Judasim. They are all about ways to change existing structures, about institutionalized ideological control, which means it is the belief and the structures that maintain it that is more key to the rulership of a nation than the person who espouses such beliefs.

Polytheism itself is no way to run a nation, but ideologies based in those assumptions absolutely can be.



> So, what institution are you talking about?




The institutions of governance and rulership, the tradition of the people, the logistics that allows public works, the framework of the military, the designation of a holy site, the power to manipulate people through established, transcendant authority that goes beyond the individuals excising that authoirty.

Feudal Kingship is an institution, a tradition, a particular order to things. That way didn't change drastically for hundreds of years because people believed in it, not because they believed in individual kings. When this institution loses that ideological credibility, it falls, as so many Chinese dynasties have.



> Since when!? Again, you are acting as though the way government works in the 21st century can be helpfully generalized to the past.




You're using a lot of demands and presenting my argument for me. Do you want to have a conversation, or would you just like to go on assuming that I'm wrong and sure of your own veracity? Because while I'm interested in talking about the underpinnings of faith and devotion as nessecary to the operation of a successful rulership, I'm not really interested in trying to win an internet argument, so if it's the former we can talk, and I'd ask you to listen rather than assume my actions smack of ignorance, and if it's the latter, I'm wasting my time either way, I guess.

Rulership is evidenced by getting people to do what you want. If you get the peasants to pay their taxes, go to war for you, and say "Long live the king!" congrats, you're a successful monarch. If you have a revolt under your rule and managed to be killed by a bunch of revolutionaries, you're not. Rather, the leaders who got them to revolt are the successful rulers. People won't do what they don't believe in unless forced, and force only gets you to get them to do it 'till your back is turned.

It's the difference between the Intimidate skill and the Diplomacy skill.



> Make a game mechanical argument for why this should be true.




The mere existence of the Aristocrat class implies that some people rise to the top despite not being ludicrously mighty weavers of magic and steel, that there are some things birth or wealth can get you that slaying orcs cannot. 



> How is this skill focus necessary to convince the court that you can kill them all in 12 seconds? All this skill focus would do is confer +3 to a diplomacy check or whatever. In my view, the circumstance bonus conferred by killing people to such checks would be decidedly larger.




It's not nessecary to bully the court into acting, nor is it wise. This would quite obviously be a use of the Intimidate skill, not Diplomacy. And Intimidate doesn't last long, nor does it get people to follow you unless you remain constantly in their presence. 

Rather, convincing the court that you are right, that you should be supported, and that you are the man with the right knowledge and skills and blessings to lead to prosperity is, at it's most cruel, a Bluff check. 

Even game-mechanically, threats of violence are not the best way to lead a group of people.

Historically, think of the Bedouin conversion to Islam. The Bedouin were undoubtedly stronger, tougher, faster, and better warriors than the civilized folk of Mecca and Medina. In order for the Islamic Empire to even come to first fruition, it was nessecary for the Bedouin to embrace a theology of a militarily weaker people, an ideology that they didn't need. 



> But government by stable bureaucratic institutions based on the rule of law is an incredibly recent development.




Institutions are a human norm, from the rites of initiation in tribal societies to the Catholic Church, people look for traditional systems to measure new changes by. It's not based on the rule of law, but on the human desire to believe in something beyond themselves, on the imaginairy sphere of faith, devotion, and ideology.

Maybe "institutions" is too precise a word. Traditions? Social structures? Whatever. The point is that it is the system that has power, not the individual players in that system. Those who manipulate the system the best can excise more personal power than others. In D&D, this isn't measured by level precisely, but in a host of skills that many adventurers choose not to advance, thus making most adventurers rather poor rulers (though great people for the rulers to have around).


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## Hussar (Jun 9, 2006)

Heh, when you think about it.  Would you REALLY want Conan for your king?


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## Andor (Jun 9, 2006)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Maybe "institutions" is too precise a word. Traditions? Social structures? Whatever. The point is that it is the system that has power, not the individual players in that system. Those who manipulate the system the best can excise more personal power than others. In D&D, this isn't measured by level precisely, but in a host of skills that many adventurers choose not to advance, thus making most adventurers rather poor rulers (though great people for the rulers to have around).




I take it you're not a fan of the Hero theory of history?    

Institutions are powerful things, but there have been people in history who smashed them flat. Sometimes the change only lasted for their lifetime. The Pharoh who tried to introduce monotheism springs to mind. Sometimes a whole new set of social institutions spring up at their command, like Ieyasu Tokugawa.

It's likely that the durability of the institutional change that High Level heros can accomplish will be affected by these hypothetical 'Profession King' skills, but the personal power of High Level Heros in their own lifetimes cannot really be argued.

If you honestly want to come up with a good system of goverment for DnD, construct one that co-opts the power of adventurers as they come up in ranks, and brings them into the system and inculcates them with it's institutional values as they grow in power. That system I can believe in. A strictly hereditary feudalism that ignores the 20th level fighter because he was born a peasant? That system lasts exactly as long as it takes that peasant hero to get ticked off.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 9, 2006)

> Institutions are powerful things, but there have been people in history who smashed them flat. Sometimes the change only lasted for their lifetime. The Pharoh who tried to introduce monotheism springs to mind. Sometimes a whole new set of social institutions spring up at their command, like Ieyasu Tokugawa.




Yeah, I'd agree. I'd say that those that lasted a lifetime (like Ankhenaten, or even the Huns to a large extent) didn't manage to manipulate the institutions right, or failed to introduce ones that were better than the ones before, while those that spawned new systems (like Tokugawa) managed to be the kind of adventurers who put ranks into the appropriate rulership skills. 



> If you honestly want to come up with a good system of goverment for DnD, construct one that co-opts the power of adventurers as they come up in ranks, and brings them into the system and inculcates them with it's institutional values as they grow in power. That system I can believe in. A strictly hereditary feudalism that ignores the 20th level fighter because he was born a peasant? That system lasts exactly as long as it takes that peasant hero to get ticked off.




Yeah, I see it kind of like a knighthood, shogun, or mamluk caste. They're powerful, maybe even more powerful than the true king or emperor, but as long as they're occupied fighting monsters in far away lands and defending the institutions, they're supporting the system rather than trying to co-opt it for themselves.


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## fusangite (Jun 9, 2006)

Kamikaze Midget,

I could go through you post paragraph by paragraph and point out all the ways that a study of anthropology, scociology or history would show your claims to be in serious need of revision. A few posts back, you stated that you did not need to provide real world examples or any academic theory to justify the positions you were taking.

I just can't be bothered debating with someone who repeatedly makes up various generalizations that have no basis in reality whatsoever. 

I have provided ample game mechanical, historical and sociological reasoning in support of my statements challenging yours. You have responded to my challenges by just making up more stuff while declaring that you are not obliged to provide game mechanical, historical or sociological reasons in support of your positions. Instead, you simply declare various things to be true as a matter of personal convenience.

And when that's not enough, you move the goalposts. For instance, you make a claim about priests. I challenge it with hard evidence. And you then turn around and refute it by talking about what kings do.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2006)

> I could go through you post paragraph by paragraph and point out all the ways that a study of anthropology, scociology or history would show your claims to be in serious need of revision. A few posts back, you stated that you did not need to provide real world examples or any academic theory to justify the positions you were taking.




It's not self-evident that feudal monarchy outlived any individual feudal monarch? That imperial governance outlived any individual emperor? That one cannot rule by personal power alone, but must be supported by an entire network of social norms, conventions, and mores to effectively get people to listen to you?

I'm not really making that bold of a claim, here. Perhaps I'm not making it clearly, or not making it well (which I think is the real problem), but it certainly shouldn't need me to go through the effort of pointing out the existence in history of institutions, norms, systems, that outlive individuals. Thus, it only follows that it is the systems that have the power of control, not the individuals.



> I just can't be bothered debating with someone who repeatedly makes up various generalizations that have no basis in reality whatsoever.




This kind of statement is insultingly dismissive, man. Can I ask you to stop?



> I have provided ample game mechanical, historical and sociological reasoning in support of my statements challenging yours. You have responded to my challenges by just making up more stuff while declaring that you are not obliged to provide game mechanical, historical or sociological reasons in support of your positions. Instead, you simply declare various things to be true as a matter of personal convenience.




More likely, I haven't been making my point clearly enough, as shown by your statement below. I'm not engaged in an argument with you, I don't need to be right or have a debate or somehow "win." My position was never crafted or intended to be The Truth, just more fuel for the discussion, another point of conversation.



> And when that's not enough, you move the goalposts. For instance, you make a claim about priests. I challenge it with hard evidence. And you then turn around and refute it by talking about what kings do.




"Priests" was probably too specific of me. The true intended thrust of the point was that there will be social structures built before the PC's come on the field in which personal power is not the measure of a ruler, but rather the ability to manipulate those structures. To get people to do what they want to do will require more than acts of personal heroism, it will require a talent at manipulating the social structures in place or for being able to get the people to accept a new one (as shown by the fictional "Profession: King" skill). 

This is exampled, game-mechanically, in the difference between the Intimidate and Diplomacy skills, for one. Both can be used to make a target friendly, but only one forms that position with any lasting credibility, and it's not the one that cows them into submission, but the one that makes them want to follow you.

The fact that the game has an Aristocrat NPC class also provides evidence that people without powerful magic or martial skills can and often do become rulers, leaders, and champions, without the virtue of character levels or stat-boosting items or heroic deeds. They get this way because of the institutions of rulership rather than their own personal might (which is probably less than many others').

Your example about how a circumstance bonus would outweigh an NPC's skill focus ignores the difference between making someone obey you and getting someone to follow you, which is substantial, as shown by the division between the Intimidate and Diplomacy skills.

If I've clarified my point, good, we can talk about it's relative merits if you care to. If you'd rather talk about how poor a debater I am, you can PM me.


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## Snoweel (Jun 10, 2006)

What's most frustrating about Kamikazee Midget is that he's taken a discussion on political systems in a D&D world and turned it into his own forum for long-winded dissertations on real world history.

KM, your arguments have almost nothing to do with D&D. You fail to explain how all of your beauracracies, 'capable' governors and much-lauded *institutions* would even arise in the first place, given the existence of D&D-type power levels.

As I see things, nations would remain small, or at least directly proportional to the power level of the ruler. In many cases, if not most, a D&D world would be full of city-states ruled by powerful individuals or groups thereof. Alliances might form between these states, or a short 'civil war' (pretty much the duration of an encounter between high-level D&D entities, including the accompanying slaughter of however many hundreds or thousands of foot-soldiers) could lead to the rulers of one settlement taking over another settlement, forming larger nation-type political units that would last as long as the leadership of that state remained stable (and in most cases, alive).

Heredity would only be as strong as the power level of the heir, though I do believe that the scion of a high level character would have ample oportunity to gain levels relatively quickly during the life of their parent.

That said, I envisage something of a 'ruling class' consisting of individuals who share both high levels, and interpersonal relationships. Basically, states run by 'adventuring parties' (for want of a better term), with new members joining as they reach similar levels, and old members dying or leaving due to personality clashes. There might not even be an official ruler, which would also work against heredity becoming a factor in succession - this would be a meritocracy of sorts (rule by those most able to guarantee their own position).

Of course this would include aristocrats, but only the high level ones. I actually see the aristocrat class as the middle-tier 'nobility' of such a system - the ones engaged in the day-to-day running of the realm.

So in all this I just don't see large states forming. I certainly don't see 'ability to rule' as being a factor either. I dare say many if not most states would eventually fail (as they generally have done throughout history), and peace and stability would be very rare. The world would pretty much be a playground for the powerful, and rulership of a state might change hands very frequently.


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## Baron Opal (Jun 10, 2006)

I see city-states as the natural governmental form, but as a consequence of the hazardous nature of the world rather than the limitations of rulership.


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## Someone (Jun 10, 2006)

Snoweel´s analysis depends on the assumption that high-level characters are common enough and at least a good amount of them have an interest on ruling. It´s not unreasonable to think so, but I think people here are focusing the problem wrongly: the OP and other posters affirm that given the power that individuals can archieve in D&D, it´s inevitable that high level characters will rule the land. Their opponents reply that it´d be so difficult for a character alone, no matter how powerful, to hold power and effectively rule that it´s not the case. 

I think that´s the wrong approach because we´re discussing fantasy settings: they are not real. We use those settings to play, and some would prefer a world with large kingdoms, instead of tiny pieces of land governed by warring super characters. I agree that high level characters and high CR monsters would have in any world an impact that most gaming worlds neglect to mention. In that regard I´d agree with the OP. As written, most settings are unrealistic.

However, there are mechanisms we could use to explain how the world arrived at the desired circumstances, say, a large kingdom ruled by a lowish level character.

Let´s say that in the primordial chaos of clashing Conan wannabes there´s a powerful character that doesn´t want to rule, but has an interest on the stability of the kingdom. Let´s suppose he´s a wizard. Said wizard puts King Puppet the First on the throne, lets him decide what peasant owns the goat, and dedicates himself to investigation, drawing a generous portion of the microscopic kingdom to finance it.

Since Wizard is powerful and everybody knows he´s the power behind the throne, everybody decides it´s better to assault Fighter´s and Barbarian´s kingdoms, and not disturb the one that can teleport away, and then scry and disintegrate you when you´re asleep. King Puppet (by now King Puppet the 2nd) and Wizard live long and prosperous lives. After a while, the kingdom is well proptected by Wizard´s apprentices, who, free from deciding goat ownerships and having a solid stream of gold to spend on investigation, also grew powerful. They fund a magic academy. 

Now the small kingdom had two generations of ruling stability. That´s neat for the average innkeeper and peasant! imagine living on a world where taxes don´t change every time your ruler is kicked out of the throne, and you don´t have to worry about your new lord instituting a theocrazy just because he´s a cleric of the god of Chaos. King Puppet´s kingdom flourishes, and the magic academy income also increases.

Now the powers behind the throne, the wizards, decide it´s time to expand the kingdom´s territory (and the academy´s money) by invading their neighbors. An assorted force of wizards and well equipped fighters teleport into King Cleric´s palace and kick his fat ass out of the throne before he´s able to say "Oh my god", while the superior army of King Puppet is greeted by the population, who´s very happy of not having to build the immense temple King Cleric was building.

Now, the kingdom is very resistant to high-level commando attack. If they kill King Puppet, the wizards have only to put King Mannequin in place, after scrapping the would-be usurpers off the walls. They would have to kill the wizards first, and they are relatively many, well organized, and well funded. We can suppose that if Magister in Command dies, he´ll be quickly replaced (after the killer is scrapped off the walls), and his replacement will also be powerful. Those replacement don´t have to interfere with national politics more than having a friendly reminder of what would happen if the stream of gold to the academy diminishes. At this point, national aristocrats, endowed with a vast array of Skill Focus: Diplomacy, Negotiator feats and skills, and actual experience, manage everything, and Magister in Command just has to veto the rulings he doesn´t like.

Puppet´s (now Emperor Puppet) lands increase and evolve after this point, in a variety of scenarios left for the reader. Also, other explanation about *how high level characters are integrated in the defense of the goverment without being directly involved in ruling* can be imagined; because it´s of course impossible to effectively defend against decided high level D&D characters if you can´t count on more of the same.


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## Hussar (Jun 10, 2006)

Umm, but, aren't city states pretty much exactly how historical Europe looked?  The idea of nation states is extremely anachronistic.  Even Rome, while nominally ruling the empire, had very little say in the day to day governance of the provinces.  And, after the fall of Rome, and before the Renaissance, Europe is pretty much entirely city states or at least small kingdoms.

I'm not sure how city states and beaurocracy are exclusive.  

The reason you don't have HLC's ruling countries is two fold.  A.  Many HLC's are powerful enough to own their own demiplane.  Why would they bother running a country?  B.  Regardless of the level of the HLC, they have to sleep sometime.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2006)

> You fail to explain how all of your beauracracies, 'capable' governors and much-lauded institutions would even arise in the first place, given the existence of D&D-type power levels.




I'd say they were there before any person achieved D&D-type power levels. I'd argue that adventurers need training, infrastructure, and civilization to support them. Evidence for this includes the DMG's demographic tables, which places more high-level, PC-classed adventurers in larger population centers.

There's also the point that in order to make it to 2nd level, a first-level fighter needs a structure to support him. He needs to get a hold of weapons and armor, meaning he either needs to set up a mining structure, or take advantage of an already-existing one, or he won't survive the challenges to make it to 2nd level. The difference is only increased as he gains levels -- by the time he's 20th level, he needs wizards or sorcerers (who need their own supplies) to enchant magic items for him, smiths with the abiltiy to craft masterwork items, etc., or he won't be able to meet the challenges required of him.

So adventurers are dependant, to a significant extent, on the institutions of society being there to hold them up, and if they don't already exist, they must be created before the adventurer can reach a higher level, or he won't survive the challenges. So, in order to achieve D&D-style power levels, institutions are required, making their growth at least analgous.

If magic items are only available in ancient ruins or dungeons, or if an alternate "personal power" advancement is used, and if training isn't key, all this could be avoided. The core rules suggest that there's something of a magic item market, which makes institutions quite key to personal power, as they are in the real world.



> As I see things, nations would remain small, or at least directly proportional to the power level of the ruler. In many cases, if not most, a D&D world would be full of city-states ruled by powerful individuals or groups thereof. Alliances might form between these states, or a short 'civil war' (pretty much the duration of an encounter between high-level D&D entities, including the accompanying slaughter of however many hundreds or thousands of foot-soldiers) could lead to the rulers of one settlement taking over another settlement, forming larger nation-type political units that would last as long as the leadership of that state remained stable (and in most cases, alive).




Sounds cool.   



> So in all this I just don't see large states forming. I certainly don't see 'ability to rule' as being a factor either. I dare say many if not most states would eventually fail (as they generally have done throughout history), and peace and stability would be very rare. The world would pretty much be a playground for the powerful, and rulership of a state might change hands very frequently.




Mostly the reason I'd say this doesn't work as a default is because of the need for 20th level folk to have things that society provides them with to get to that point in the first place (magic items, training, safe harbor cities, etc.) But if they're somehow separated from that limitation (and reasonably common in the world), I like the world you've set up. Sounds knock-down-drag-out.


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## fusangite (Jun 10, 2006)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> What's most frustrating about Kamikazee Midget is that he's taken a discussion on political systems in a D&D world and turned it into his own forum for long-winded dissertations on real world history.



I'm actually quite tolerant of that, as long as it's based on some actual historical thinking...







> As I see things, nations would remain small, or at least directly proportional to the power level of the ruler. In many cases, if not most, a D&D world would be full of city-states ruled by powerful individuals or groups thereof.



I think we are agreeing about geographic scale but I am inclined to think of D&D worlds as being more rural in character. Pre-industrial cities came into being largely due to trade. D&D economics are essentially Aristotelian in character in that value is objective (in that it inheres in physical objects themselves) as opposed to subjective or transactional. Goods are of a fixed value irrespective of supply or demand. This is so deeply embedded in the rules that if one tries to apply modern economic theory to D&D, it breaks. The relative values of metals is fixed; a ratio between XP and GP is mechanically enshrined in item creation; GP values of spell material components are fixed; etc. 

In much the way that Aristotelian thought slowed trade and economic development in the Middle Ages by essentially declaring profitable trade and money-lending forms of fraud, D&D economics would, I would like to suggest, even more dramatically discourage the development of market economies in favour of war booty, raiding and tribute collection because Aristotelian economics are not merely a weird theory but a physically-provable reality.







> Alliances might form between these states, or a short 'civil war' (pretty much the duration of an encounter between high-level D&D entities, including the accompanying slaughter of however many hundreds or thousands of foot-soldiers) could lead to the rulers of one settlement taking over another settlement, forming larger nation-type political units that would last as long as the leadership of that state remained stable (and in most cases, alive).



Exactly. D&D politics would be all about suzerainty and not sovereignty. I think the Caroligian Empire of 780-880 is basically emblematic of the kind of national or imperial entities D&D is likely to produce. And I think the reaction would be the same as that of the Franks after the empire's collapse: make sure the guy I pay my taxes to can protect survive and protect me next time.


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## fusangite (Jun 10, 2006)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Umm, but, aren't city states pretty much exactly how historical Europe looked?



City states only tended to arise on a large scale in important trading areas. It's a lot harder to find inland city states; and when you do find them, they tend to be on a very important inland waterway. Outside of these areas, the more likely formation are what the post-Carolingian Franks called "Petty Realms." (Tolkien consciously uses the same term for the political reality in Eriador after the collapse of Arnor. 


> The idea of nation states is extremely anachronistic.



Agreed. What tended to unite places, as you suggest in the case of Rome, was not so much common language, culture and institutions but rather the ability for a single power to militarily dominate it.







> And, after the fall of Rome, and before the Renaissance, Europe is pretty much entirely city states or at least small kingdoms.



Actually, after the darkening of the sun in the 6th century, even inside the Byzantine Empire, mid-sized towns basically died-out for a few hundred years.


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 10, 2006)

> I'm actually quite tolerant of that, as long as it's based on some actual historical thinking...




Some examples of insititutions that have outlasted individuals:


 The Roman Catholic Church
 Feudal Monarchy
 Imperial Governance
 Taxes
 Military organization
 Public education
 Agriculture
 Democracy
 Captialism
 Marriage

Shouldn't be hard to pad out this list more.

I don't believe the rules support the statement that a single given high-level D&D character could usurp the D&D equivalent of any of these, no matter how many orcs he could slay, because these get people to obey their commandments in ways that the mere threat of violence would be ineffective in enforcing.


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## fusangite (Jun 10, 2006)

Someone said:
			
		

> I think that´s the wrong approach because we´re discussing fantasy settings: they are not real.



But for many of us, to suspend disbelief, we need a world that is self-consistent. While this is not a universal taste by any means, I think this requirement is a basic premise of the thread.

As for your scenario, while possible, I would suggest that it is premised on a distribution of class levels that is fairly flat: a very very very few guys at 15th level and the rest of the world at 1st. 

In this way, I think, you are basically agreeing with us: in order for despotisms to emerge in D&D, class levels have to be distributed differently than the DMG indicates. There are other difficulties I have with your scenario but they aren't really that important because I think your argument is generally illustrative of the problem we are talking about.


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## Someone (Jun 10, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> But for many of us, to suspend disbelief, we need a world that is self-consistent.




Sure, I agree with that. See last response.



> While this is not a universal taste by any means, I think this requirement is a basic premise of the thread.




I´m afraid I didn´t explain myself clearly, as usual. By saying "your approach is the wrong one" I mean that perhaps, instead of starting from the premises ("There are characters able to decimate an army. How would politics evolve?") we should instead try a different one, mainly "In may game I want large kingdoms ruled by relatively low level kings. How´s that possible?"



> As for your scenario, while possible, I would suggest that it is premised on a distribution of class levels that is fairly flat: a very very very few guys at 15th level and the rest of the world at 1st.




Not necesarily. The premises are: characters don´t have their levels written on the face, so attacking another ruler is always risky*, and a sufficiently large number of characters are willing to fight in a king-of-the-throne game.

*There´s a large potential employment for bards telling how badass the king is!



> In this way, I think, you are basically agreeing with us: in order for despotisms to emerge in D&D, class levels have to be distributed differently than the DMG indicates.




I fail to see how. In King Puppet´s kigdom more characters of various levels can live, with a simple condition: they don´t want the throne, are afraid of fighting for it, or think another throne would be easier to conquer.



> There are other difficulties I have with your scenario but they aren't really that important because I think your argument is generally illustrative of the problem we are talking about.




There are various problems we´re talking about, so I´m not sure, but probably yes. In any case, though, the example isn´t intended as a foolproof, ironclad explanation of how large empires must necessarily and logically emerge from DMG´s demographics. Instead, is a tongue in cheek explanation of how we can join a desired result (large kingdoms) with the premises (DMG demographics), with enough verosimilitude to not break a player´s suspension of disbelief (and that´s what we´re looking for, isn´t it?), so it´s natural it has problems. But, if you´re at the table and your DM explains the history of the Pupper Dinasty to you, would you gladly swallow it with little effort, or would you start saying "Sorry lad, wait a moment. That thing it´s actually impossible because..."

On another topic, (and believe me I don´t want to be insulting) the part about extrapolating the simplified PHB´s economics intended for equipping characters to setting economies made me laugh out loud. I wonder if horses are 10 feet wide in your games.


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## fusangite (Jun 10, 2006)

Someone said:
			
		

> On another topic, (and believe me I don´t want to be insulting) the part about extrapolating the simplified PHB´s economics intended for equipping characters to setting economies made me laugh out loud. I wonder if horses are 10 feet wide in your games.



I'll deal with the rest of your post later. But my observations, if you read what I am saying, are not based on the PHB equipment lists. They are based on the fixed ration in value between CP, SP, GP and PP and, much more importantly, on spell material components and the mechanics for creating masterwork and magical items. 

If you don't believe me, try having inflation in your game and watch what happens to the relative power of item creation feats and spells with expensive material components.


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## Someone (Jun 11, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> I'll deal with the rest of your post later. But my observations, if you read what I am saying, are not based on the PHB equipment lists. They are based on the fixed ration in value between CP, SP, GP and PP and, much more importantly, on spell material components and the mechanics for creating masterwork and magical items.
> 
> If you don't believe me, try having inflation in your game and watch what happens to the relative power of item creation feats and spells with expensive material components.




So what? I´m afraid I do not understand your argument. It´s evident that you´ll make a mess out of crafting times, item creation and all, but it´s hadly an excuse for not having variation of prices within the game world unless the characters in it metagame -or you seriously suggest that, because wood is now more expensive, a carpenter now spends _more time_ crafting the same table-


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## Imp (Jun 11, 2006)

The original question is a lot more about the ramifications of vastly different levels of personal power on the politics of a world.  The artifacts of the economics laid out in the PHB are there more for simplicity's sake than laying out a decisive worldview, so I'd consider them very secondary for the purposes of the (silly, but fun) discussion...  I mean, laying out any kind of realistic economics in a game is way beyond _my_ DM powers I'm happy to admit, probably everyone else's, and probably most professional economists!



> There's also the point that in order to make it to 2nd level, a first-level fighter needs a structure to support him. He needs to get a hold of weapons and armor, meaning he either needs to set up a mining structure, or take advantage of an already-existing one, or he won't survive the challenges to make it to 2nd level.



..but this isn't true!  All he needs to do is survive a certain fairly low number of encounters, and if he's canny he can tilt them in his favor.  And in 3E you don't have to pay for training.  Sure, things would tilt to _some_ kind of social structure, but it's perfectly possible for a lone savage to work his way up to 4th level or so if he plays his cards right.


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

Someone said:
			
		

> So what? I´m afraid I do not understand your argument. It´s evident that you´ll make a mess out of crafting times, item creation and all, but it´s hadly an excuse for not having variation of prices within the game world unless the characters in it metagame -or you seriously suggest that, because wood is now more expensive, a carpenter now spends _more time_ crafting the same table-



So, instead of Aristotelian economic theory being true, you find it more realistic and normal for the _time it takes to physically make stuff_ to fluctuate based on inflation? Given a choice between (a) Aristotle's economic theory being true and (b) the physical difficulty and time required for work producing an identical product to fluctuate based on inflation, most people would choose to interpret D&D rules as supporting Aristotle, especially given that they agree with him on chemistry and physics (ie. four elements and non-geometric falling damage).


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## I'm A Banana (Jun 11, 2006)

> All he needs to do is survive a certain fairly low number of encounters, and if he's canny he can tilt them in his favor. And in 3E you don't have to pay for training. Sure, things would tilt to some kind of social structure, but it's perfectly possible for a lone savage to work his way up to 4th level or so if he plays his cards right.




In order to survive those encounters, he will need the structure to get him appropriate equipment (mining, woodworking, armorsmithing, masterwork or enhancement bonuses), as well as the structure to provide him quick, efficient healing (potions, or at least safe harbor provided by other characters).

Throw a lone 1st level fighter without any equipment against 13 CR 1 encounters, and it's only a matter of time before he gets worn down unless he's VERY lucky.


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## Someone (Jun 11, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> So, instead of Aristotelian economic theory being true, you find it more realistic and normal for the _time it takes to physically make stuff_ to fluctuate based on inflation?




No. By "making a mess out of craft time creation" etc I mean calculating it becomes more difficult, not that it fluctuates, as I actually say in my post. You were, IMO, the one suggesting that given how XP and time is tied to gold coins, you can´t change gold coin value without kicking In Game Cosmic Order in the balls. Imagine what would happen if the party´s wizard convinces the king to make gold coins ten times heavier! He would make items for 1/10th of the XP cost!



> Given a choice between (a) Aristotle's economic theory being true and (b) the physical difficulty and time required for work producing an identical product to fluctuate based on inflation, most people would choose to interpret D&D rules as supporting Aristotle, especially given that they agree with him on chemistry and physics (ie. four elements and non-geometric falling damage).




There are other approaches, one of them is Imp´s one: supposing that inflation and such things exist but you don´t care about them and instead dedicate your valuable free time to more constructive things, like making your player character´s lives miserable. Inflation may appear, perhaps, in DMG VII, but I don´t see a core rulebook including rules for that.

Also, "X it´s dificult to calculate" doesn´t make Y true by default, as we agree. At least you changed your position from this: 



			
				fusangite said:
			
		

> D&D economics are essentially Aristotelian in character in that value is objective (in that it inheres in physical objects themselves) as opposed to subjective or transactional. Goods are of a fixed value irrespective of supply or demand




Now, it´s just a matter of DM´s work, not that if you play D&D your worlds _must_ have Aristotelian economics. 

I´d like to recap about this:



> most people would choose to interpret D&D rules as supporting Aristotle, especially given that they agree with him on chemistry and physics (ie. four elements and non-geometric falling damage)"




D&D rules support a whole lot of crazy things. For example, there´s no way to break a bone or lose a limb in a fight. Horses have a 10 ft x 10 ft face. You can break a 20 ft thick stone wall with a wooden, nonmagical quarterstaff f you´re strong enough, and the quarterstaff won´t suffer damage.

There are other things. People can turn invisible and throw fireballs. Dragons the size of a tower can fly. There are people as strong as a giant.

Actually, they support even more things: people can walk and speak, things normally fall downwards.

Now, we can make a ludicrousness scale, starting with Real Life physics and finishing with Fat Horse realities. The trick is where to draw the line on that scale and decide where the game designers intended to make all D&D world as it is, and where they just make the ruling that way because it was just easier or more balanced. They supposed horses and riders would turn around a lot, hence the square facing. Recording weapon damage when striking hard surfaces would be boring and take game time, therefore they didn´t include it. It´s more fun if your character remains whole for the entire campaing, therefore we´ll jus toetip around that and left critical hit charts for other game systems.

And, IMO, falling damage is linear because... well, imagine what if not. What do you want, a formula with G, player character sphericity and air viscosity? And not all settigns adscribe to the 4 elements cosmology (which are a matter of flavor more than rules) and also we already have a plethora of different elementals in official monster books so big that those greek philosophers must be rolling in their graves.


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

Someone said:
			
		

> No. By "making a mess out of craft time creation" etc I mean calculating it becomes more difficult, not that it fluctuates, as I actually say in my post. You were, IMO, the one suggesting that given how XP and time is tied to gold coins,



They are. That's what the rules say.







> you can´t change gold coin value without kicking In Game Cosmic Order in the balls. Imagine what would happen if the party´s wizard convinces the king to make gold coins ten times heavier! He would make items for 1/10th of the XP cost!



Indeed. So the logical thing to believe is that D&D worlds have the physics medieval people believed the world to have. In pre-Franciscan economic theory, a fixed amount of gold always had the same objective value. This is clearly the way to read D&D rules if you don't want the above to happen. If one used Aristotelian physics, if each GP contained ten times as much gold, it would be worth 10gp because value is objective. 

See: if you make value subjective, all the calculations go haywire, as you yourself point out. If value is objective, everything works smoothly.

All you are doing by illustrating that the calculations no longer conform to the RAW the moment you introduce inflation is agreeing with me.







> There are other approaches, one of them is Imp´s one: supposing that inflation and such things exist but you don´t care about them and instead dedicate your valuable free time to more constructive things, like making your player character´s lives miserable.



Yes. But a few posts ago, you were arguing that you valued self-consistency in D&D worlds. Now you are taking the opposite position, which is fine. But, as I said above, this thread is premised on D&D being self-consistent, on the idea that rules of the game are the physics of the universe.







> Also, "X it´s dificult to calculate" doesn´t make Y true by default, as we agree. At least you changed your position from this:



These difficult calculations to which you refer would entail changing all the listed values for magic items in the DMG and all the listed values for spell material components in the PHB and revising the process for making masterwork items. In other words, it would involve changing the rules. 

This thread is about what the world would look like if you didn't rewrite any of the rules to accommodate a particular objective.







> Now, it´s just a matter of DM´s work, not that if you play D&D your worlds _must_ have Aristotelian economics.



Indeed. As you say above, handwaving inconsistencies and rewriting the rules are both options available to the DM. The reason these options are off the radar screen for the purposes of this discussion is the discussion's premise.







> D&D rules support a whole lot of crazy things. For example, there´s no way to break a bone or lose a limb in a fight.



Indeed. This suggests that the physics of D&D are the same as those of the Diehard movies or other popular action movies in which broken limbs never happen, in which heroes can get bloody and chewed-up but are always either (a) totally ready to fight, (b) unconscious or (c) dead. Broken limbs are never mentioned in my games for precisely this reason. It damages the self-consistency of the world if things can happen to NPCs that cannot physically happen to the characters. Does that mean I ever declare broken limbs don't happen? Of course not. They just never happen and never get mentioned.







> Horses have a 10 ft x 10 ft face.



The 10' x 10' face does not equal a 10' x' 10' area.







> There are other things. People can turn invisible and throw fireballs. Dragons the size of a tower can fly. There are people as strong as a giant.



Indeed. So, once again, the logical inference to draw is that Aristotelian physics are true. Aristotelian physics can explain these things whereas Newtonian physics cannot. The reasonable inference to draw is that Aristotelian physics are true and Newtonian physics, false. 

All you are doing by making these arguments is reinforcing my basic point. The physics of our world cannot possibly be true in a self-consistent D&D world. The premise of this thread is: "How would D&D politics be different, given that the laws of cause and effect are different in D&D worlds?" If you don't think this is a legitimate or constructive question to ask, we will continue talking at cross purposes.







> Actually, they support even more things: people can walk and speak, things normally fall downwards.



Every model of physics supports these things. The fact that these things are true is not indicative of anything.







> Now, we can make a ludicrousness scale, starting with Real Life physics and finishing with Fat Horse realities. The trick is where to draw the line on that scale and decide where the game designers intended to make all D&D world as it is, and where they just make the ruling that way because it was just easier or more balanced.



I'm not interested in the motives of the designers. I don't really care whether D&D developed the set of physical laws it has intentionally or unintentionally. My interest is in D&D worlds being self-consistent and thinking through the implications of this. You appear not to be interested in doing these things. Unfortunately, that's what this thread is about.







> And, IMO, falling damage is linear because... well, imagine what if not. What do you want, a formula with G, player character sphericity and air viscosity?



Again, who cares why it is this way?The fact that it is this way just makes it easier for me to import Aristotle whole-cloth rather than trying to cobble together a physical theory that explains the natural world in D&D by myself.







> And not all settigns adscribe to the 4 elements cosmology (which are a matter of flavor more than rules)



Setting books can change all kinds of things. My point is that the elementals statted in the RAW and the default settings and premises of the RAW are based on the 4-element theory. 

Your argument seems to be "It is possible to modify D&D so that the physics are not Aristotelian." You will get no argument from me there.


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

Imp said:
			
		

> The original question is a lot more about the ramifications of vastly different levels of personal power on the politics of a world.  The artifacts of the economics laid out in the PHB are there more for simplicity's sake than laying out a decisive worldview, so I'd consider them very secondary for the purposes of the (silly, but fun) discussion...



I think that's how most people see them. But the premise of this thread is, "How would political outcomes be different, given that the laws governing the D&D universe are different from ours?" If you run a campaign that handwaves these differences, this thread is probably not going to be a very fun place to be.


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

Someone said:
			
		

> I´m afraid I didn´t explain myself clearly, as usual. By saying "your approach is the wrong one" I mean that perhaps, instead of starting from the premises ("There are characters able to decimate an army. How would politics evolve?") we should instead try a different one, mainly "In may game I want large kingdoms ruled by relatively low level kings. How´s that possible?"



Okay. That's not what Snoweel asked. It seems that coming into a thread and suggesting that the thread's premise is uninteresting to you and should be ignored may not be the best way of getting a constructive discussion going about what you want to talk about.







> Not necesarily. The premises are: characters don´t have their levels written on the face, so attacking another ruler is always risky*,



As you yourself acknowledge, this is not that hard to figure out, especially if the PCs are high level. But more to the point, the reason I was pointing out that the demographic distribution of levels is pyramidal in the RAW is to argue against your idea that people fall into the category of either the powerful or the masses. The people governing first-level characters would not be the 15th level characters; they would be the 5th level characters, leading to a non-despotic form of state organization. Secondly, half a dozen mid-level characters can take down a high-level character; your model seemed premised on the idea that the only people who could take down high-level characters are other high-level characters.

Now that's not to say the outcome you describe is impossible. I just don't buy your particular explanation of how to get there. I think an easier way to go is my general approach to setting up despotisms in D&D: divine intervention. Virtually every significant despotic regime historically has tended to depict its ruler as either a god or a direct agent of God. I personally find the easiest way to set something up in D&D is to ask: how did people in the historical moment it resembles explain this reality to themselves? This tends to produce simpler, less convoluted explanations for things that other methods do.


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## Someone (Jun 11, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> Okay. That's not what Snoweel asked. It seems that coming into a thread and suggesting that the thread's premise is uninteresting to you and should be ignored may not be the best way of getting a constructive discussion going about what you want to talk about.




Premise was a bad word. After all the premise is the existence of powerful characters. Let´s call it approach. If you´re not interested in my approach I´ll gladly leave the discussion.



> As you yourself acknowledge, this is not that hard to figure out, especially if the PCs are high level




Specially if they metagame and behave like player characters, not real people.



> But more to the point, the reason I was pointing out that the demographic distribution of levels is pyramidal in the RAW is to argue against your idea that people fall into the category of either the powerful or the masses. The people governing first-level characters would not be the 15th level characters; they would be the 5th level characters, leading to a non-despotic form of state organization.




That´s an interesting conjecture, and I´m expectantly waiting your experimental data on historical leaders and their character levels.



> Secondly, half a dozen mid-level characters can take down a high-level character; your model seemed premised on the idea that the only people who could take down high-level characters are other high-level characters.




The OP was clearly talking about very powerful characters and how they would be the only ones that could seize and hold the thrones. I understand that implies a king of the hill scenario where everyone wants power; in that case, the ones in power would be sooner or later the very high levels. If we must, substitute "high ECL parties" when I say "high level characters" and we´re set. 



> Now that's not to say the outcome you describe is impossible. I just don't buy your particular explanation of how to get there.




Then we agree it´d be better if we don´t play in each other´s games, if my backgrounds can´t convince you and I can´t stand your approach to rules.



> I think an easier way to go is my general approach to setting up despotisms in D&D: divine intervention. Virtually every significant despotic regime historically has tended to depict its ruler as either a god or a direct agent of God.




Suppose the setting doesn´t have actively intervening gods, like Eberron. Then what?


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## Someone (Jun 11, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> So the logical thing to believe is that D&D worlds have the physics medieval people believed the world to have. In pre-Franciscan economic theory, a fixed amount of gold always had the same objective value. This is clearly the way to read D&D rules if you don't want the above to happen. If one used Aristotelian physics, if each GP contained ten times as much gold, it would be worth 10gp because value is objective.
> 
> See: if you make value subjective, all the calculations go haywire, as you yourself point out. If value is objective, everything works smoothly.




I believe we´re walking in circles in this particular derail from the thread´s OP, so I´ll try to break it. I´m I don´t understand you porperly, excuse me. Your position is, I think, to have D&D rules as the absolute axioms that define the world and build logically from there. Everything in the RAW go: people can walk and speak, dragons fly, bones and non magical quarterstaffs don´t ever break. The internal consistency of the rules are very important, and lead to adopting certain background flavor.

I think that´s fine, everyone can play the way they want, and from that opint of view, you´re absolutely right. I, sorry to say that, would only play in such game at gun point.

My approach is to understand that rules are not axioms: they are _approximations_ to model Fantasy Physics (let´s poor Aristotle rest in peace). In Fantasy Physics people walk and talk, dragons fly, heroes can kill orcs by the dozen despite having seven broken ribs and quarterstaffs break when you strike a 20 ft thick wall with them, no matter what the rules do not say. Rules must not get in the way of the game, they are tools, not the way I must play, because if I overdo and take them as totally accurate descriptions of reality they would destroy my suspension of disbelief: I would spend the evening wondering why are not swords made of bone if bone is indestructible, and the plethora of other weird things and inconsistencies you can find by the dozens in the rules forum and would surface in the game from time to time.

Therefore, in my twisted point of view, if rules are not perfect and are meant for certain circumstances it´s a _bad ruling_ to apply them where they are no meant to be applied. Yes, in the deranged ladscape of my mind applying the RAW to certaing things is a house rule. Before you ask, the one endowed by the mighty Rule 0 to decide when the rules should and should not be applied is the DM, therefore trusted with the task of preserving internal consistency. We already know you don´t like my approach and won´t play in my game even while on crack, so we´re even.


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

Someone said:
			
		

> Specially if they metagame and behave like player characters, not real people.



Wanting to figure out how powerful someone is and successfully doing so is not metagaming. It is gaming.







> That´s an interesting conjecture, and I´m expectantly waiting your experimental data on historical leaders and their character levels.



Actually, if you assess the power levels of medievals based on the value of their gear, my argument works very well if you look at who fought whom and who ruled whom. Given that this was true simply based on a geometric progression in gear value, I see no reason that geometric progression in combat ability would not further reinforce this kind of social order.







> The OP was clearly talking about very powerful characters and how they would be the only ones that could seize and hold the thrones.



I did not construe his argument quite so narrowly.







> Then we agree it´d be better if we don´t play in each other´s games, if my backgrounds can´t convince you and I can´t stand your approach to rules.



Seems fair. 


> Suppose the setting doesn´t have actively intervening gods, like Eberron. Then what?



I don't know anything about Eberron except snippets of what I've picked up on ENWorld. I haven't had much of an incentive to learn more because it doesn't seem to be about stuff that interests me very much. The idea of making polytheism deistic does not impress me very much. Generally, deism is something that one only associates with monotheistic systems or the over-god in a monotheistic philosophy operating within a monotheistic matrix (like certain relatively deistic approaches to Hinduism).







> Your position is, I think, to have D&D rules as the absolute axioms that define the world and build logically from there.



Dead on. The rules are the physics of the D&D universe. They are absolute because they are a set of universal and empirically replicatable laws of cause and effect.







> The internal consistency of the rules are very important, and lead to adopting certain background flavor.



Indeed. If I want a universe with a different set of physics I either modify D20 or use a game system that is consistent with the setting I want to run. For me, rules and "flavour" are two sides of the same coin; they are inextricable. If I want to depict a world with different laws of nature, I find or make rules that are consistent with those laws of nature. 

Self-consistency, for me, is integral to suspension of disbelief. Forgotten Realms drives me batty because the laws of cause and effect near the characters are different from the laws of cause and effect in places remote from them.







> My approach is to understand that rules are not axioms: they are approximations to model Fantasy Physics (let´s poor Aristotle rest in peace). In Fantasy Physics people walk and talk, dragons fly, heroes can kill orcs by the dozen despite having seven broken ribs and quarterstaffs break when you strike a 20 ft thick wall with them, no matter what the rules do not say.



Fair enough. I think most people game this way. I personally don't find that satisfying and so I am quite enthusiastic about discussions here on ENWorld where people ask the kind of question Snoweel is asking here.

My solution to your quarterstaff problem would be to create a house rule modifying the conditions under which objects can be sundered. By making it a house rule, rather than over-ruling the rules every time, one could have the best of both worlds -- the staff would have the physical properties you want, and the world would remain self-consistent. Furthermore, players would have a greater sense of fairness because the properties of physical objects would be both consistent and predictable.







> Rules must not get in the way of the game, they are tools,



Agreed. I use rules as a tool for describing settings; modifying the rules and creating a setting are the same process for me. Rules are not merely a tool for resolving conflicts; they are a tool for describing the kind of world in which the characters are adventuring.







> not the way I must play, because if I overdo and take them as totally accurate descriptions of reality they would destroy my suspension of disbelief



I can see that. For some people, suspension of disbelief is contingent upon the degree to which a D&D world is consistent our own world; for me, it is contingent upon which the world is consistent with itself. My feeling is that if you can make giant exploding balls of fire out of words, objects not accelerating on their way down or wounds working like an action movie is pretty minor by comparison.


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## Someone (Jun 11, 2006)

Ah, well, I´m glad I found out the source of our disagreement. Just a couple things before i´m done with the thread:



> For some people, suspension of disbelief is contingent upon the degree to which a D&D world is consistent our own world




It´s not a matter of being faithful to our own world, but to the setting; I have no problem accepting that in World of Homebrew 2 lb things fall twice as fast as 1 lb things, if it´s an integral part of it and play without worry. On the other hand, I won´t let a needlessly (IMO) strict interpretation of the rule the rules dictate that in my World of Homebrew indeed 2 lb things fall faster than 1 lb things, or that I have to make a house rule if so, instead of accepting the rules are just an approximation and live with it.

About the quarterstaff problem, it´s not a problem for me. Remember that I think that rules for quarterstaff damage are intended for striking creatures with them, not walls. If a player tries to do that I just have to say "Sorry, but you´ll break the quarterstaff before you dent the stone.", there´s no need to house rule anything.


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

Okay Kamikaze Midget, I’m procrastinating writing an essay so I’ll respond to your posts now.







			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> The kings may have been more or less influential depending upon how good they were at manipulating the institutions, but the very fact that they could be called Feudal Kings shows that it was the institution of feudal kingship that ruled the people, not the individual kings.



This is not correct. The entities that ruled people were city governments and feudal lords. The ability to enforce laws in fiefs or cities that disagreed with them was contingent upon one’s ability to mobilize sufficient military force that could smash the defiant lord or city government. There were virtually no national institutions that enabled contact or governance between the throne and individuals unmediated by the power of a local bishop, abbot or lord, except on the lands that a royal family held as its own fief.

To provide a modern analogy, think of a medieval king as equivalent to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Without the consent of powerful lords (comparable to nation states like China, the US, etc.), the king does not have sufficient resources to put down a rebel lord. Furthermore, although the kingdom has various institutions (compare to UNESCO, WHO, UNICEF, UNEP, UNHCR), these institutions are designed to interact with lords not citizens and are essentially invisible at the level of the populace being ruled. Similarly, if one is in trouble, one appeals to one’s local lord not to the remote and irrelevant throne.







> The practice of polytheism isn't the practice of choosing one god over another in a world full of gods, but rather devoting oneself to the correct gods for the job.



From the perspective of non-priests, this is true. One sacrifices to the appropriate god based on the god’s region or portfolio. 

But institutionally, it functions as a collection of cults. Aside from the Brahmin system in India, one cannot be a generalized priest; one must be a priest of a single particular god. And clearly, the D&D rules are not talking about Hindu polytheism; there is no Brahmin equivalent in D&D. Priests are always _of_ a single particular god and their acolytes and initiates are members of the cult associated with this god. 

This is what I meant by you shifting the goalposts. You were making an argument about institutions. I replied that, from an institutional perspective, polytheistic systems are a collection of cults. Therefore, there can be no role for a kind of national high priest as you posit. Powerful national high priests emerge only in monotheistic systems (and not even in Hinduism I might add) as in ancient Judea, Samaria, Byzantium, Imperial Russia, etc.







> There were never Priests of Odin and Priests of Thor, there were kings and warriors who paid them both devotion when either was due it.



You are saying that there were no priests whatsoever in Norse polytheism. This seems a very doubtful claim to me. Every polytheistic system I have studied had priests.







> I make this claim based on what polytheism is for those who practice it, which is not just a bunch of competing monotheisms, but rather one system for dealing with the supernatural world



But the institutional reality and the lay experience are not identical. We are not talking about lay culture; we are talking about institutional formation.







> Platonism isn't polytheism, though, and neither are (most kinds of) Buddhism, Confucianism, or Taosism.



What I said was that they were movements backing cosmological systems for seeing a unity within the matrix of polytheism. But philosophies, unlike religions, function, to use a modern term in Marxist political thought, like vanguard organizations rather than mass organizations. Platonism was a way for elite Romans to comprehend the polytheistic reality in which they lived. But Aristotelian, Platonic and Pythagorean academies, from an institutional perspective did not constitute the kind of power base a church in a monotheistic system would because they did not reach down to the common level. Common lay worshippers were happily making sacrifices to the god of the river over there, or what have you.







> In fact, many of those Roman and Chinese philosophies lacked any kind of real theism at all, being more concerned with a moral guidance than the world of the unseen.



Incorrect. Each philosophy had at its core a cosmological system that resembled monotheism because in Classical thought, the naturalistic fallacy was implicit. Every philosophy presented itself as the logical entailment of natural law.

Epicurean ideas about morality were inextricably yoked to a belief in an eternal, uncaused, atomic universe in which gods, human beings, etc. coalesced out of random collisions of atoms. Stoic ideas about morality arose directly from their theory of the divine _logos_. For Aristotelians, their belief in hierarchical, corporate, ordered society was directly entailed by their theories of causation, physics and their belief in the _nous_. Platonic ethics were yoked to the idea the superiority of the world of forms to the sense-perceptible world. 

Once again you have taken an idea about how things work in the modern world, in this case ethics, and applied it in a totally ahistorical way to the past.







> Polytheism itself is no way to run a nation, but ideologies based in those assumptions absolutely can be.



I have no problem with this assertion. But simply because a system of thought entails that a place be run a particular way, it in no way follows that the people controlling the institution that produces the thought will therefore be in charge. For instance, Eastern Orthodox state theory was historically the basis for the subordination of church to state. To bring it down to a personal level, Confucius was not only a political failure; he didn’t even get promoted in the imperial bureaucracy.







> The institutions of governance and rulership, the tradition of the people, the logistics that allows public works, the framework of the military, the designation of a holy site, the power to manipulate people through established, transcendant authority that goes beyond the individuals excising that authoirty.



I see the problem developing here. You are conflating institutions and ideologies. This is a mistake. In order for you to come up with reasoning that makes sense, you will need to clearly distinguish between the ideology produced by an institution and the power of the institution itself.







> Rulership is evidenced by getting people to do what you want. If you get the peasants to pay their taxes, go to war for you, and say "Long live the king!" congrats, you're a successful monarch. If you have a revolt under your rule and managed to be killed by a bunch of revolutionaries, you're not. Rather, the leaders who got them to revolt are the successful rulers. People won't do what they don't believe in unless forced, and force only gets you to get them to do it 'till your back is turned.
> 
> It's the difference between the Intimidate skill and the Diplomacy skill.



First of all, Intimidate works as long as the conditions for intimidation remain the same. The inequality in power that makes most of the difference is not something that changes when your back is turned. Operationally, there is little difference between Diplomacy and Intimidate. If conditions change, it doesn’t matter how charming you are and how much your peasants love you; they will go along with the guy whose siege engine just destroyed your gate. 

That’s not to say there are not other incentives for being popular with your peasants but, at the end of the day, what is going to matter is your ability to protect them and your ability to kill them. If you don’t have those things, all the good will in the world won’t make any difference.

Secondly, a village of first-level commoners just isn’t going to be able to do much in a revolt, given the RAW. How much is 100 peasants worth in a revolt if you have a party of 12th level characters, half of whom are casters with evocation magic?







> The mere existence of the Aristocrat class implies that some people rise to the top despite not being ludicrously mighty weavers of magic and steel, that there are some things birth or wealth can get you that slaying orcs cannot.



Aristocrats have cumulative hit points and BAB progression like everybody else.







> It's not nessecary to bully the court into acting, nor is it wise. This would quite obviously be a use of the Intimidate skill, not Diplomacy. And Intimidate doesn't last long, nor does it get people to follow you unless you remain constantly in their presence.



But when you are not around, they remain rational actors. They don’t forget you have the power to kill and replace them. Not that I am suggesting constantly threatening people is the logical way to go once you have power. But when it comes to transferring power, it makes way more sense.







> Historically, think of the Bedouin conversion to Islam. The Bedouin were undoubtedly stronger, tougher, faster, and better warriors than the civilized folk of Mecca and Medina. In order for the Islamic Empire to even come to first fruition, it was nessecary for the Bedouin to embrace a theology of a militarily weaker people, an ideology that they didn't need.



This is an incorrect reading of Islamic history. Islam was the ideological basis on which the Bedouin attacked and triumphed over the group you are talking about, led by Mohammed, an angry dissident on the outs with this group.







> Institutions are a human norm, from the rites of initiation in tribal societies to the Catholic Church, people look for traditional systems to measure new changes by. It's not based on the rule of law, but on the human desire to believe in something beyond themselves, on the imaginairy sphere of faith, devotion, and ideology.
> 
> Maybe "institutions" is too precise a word. Traditions? Social structures? Whatever.



Whatever? This is like saying “that colour – you know, green, blue, orange – whatever.” If you treat “tradition,” “institution,” and “ideology” as synonyms, is impossible to have a discussion about social organization. These terms cannot be used interchangeably because they refer to different components of a social order. By conflating them, you are able to sustain inaccurate beliefs about institutions.







> It's not self-evident that feudal monarchy outlived any individual feudal monarch?



Actually, which fiefs comprised a particular monarchical state was in pretty regular flux. Not until about 600 years into the Middle Ages is there any kind of monarchical or dynastic stability at all. And what Snoweel and I are arguing is that the fluidity and ephemeral nature of kingdoms in early medieval vassalage would likely hold permanent sway in a D&D world because of the way power and demography work.







> The true intended thrust of the point was that there will be social structures built before the PC's come on the field in which personal power is not the measure of a ruler, but rather the ability to manipulate those structures.



Of course there will be operators who can gain power without the capacity for direct coercive force. The case we are making is that the conditions in a D&D world will be such that these individuals would be much rarer and would have much less power. Certainly, these individuals finding their way to the top of kingdoms would be profoundly exceptional. As in Carolingian times, a kingdom might be able to survive at most two generations without a powerful martial figure in control.







> The fact that the game has an Aristocrat NPC class also provides evidence that people without powerful magic or martial skills can and often do become rulers, leaders, and champions, without the virtue of character levels or stat-boosting items or heroic deeds.



My reading of this is quite different than yours. My idea of a low-level aristocrat is someone like Edward VI – a king too young or incompetent to rule in his own right and effectively controlled by a regency. 

Someone like Ivan the Terrible might start out cowed and marginalized in his own court and would have to accumulate aristocrat levels until he was the martially significant based on his BAB, hit points and, yes, diplomacy skill, something than can’t be very high unless the individual in question is high-level.







			
				Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Snoweel said:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



What Snoweel is asking is how they arise in society given that there have always been high-level characters. The PCs are not born into a world of first-level characters. They are born into a world with level distribution based on the DMG’s demographics.







> Some examples of insititutions that have outlasted individuals:
> 
> The Roman Catholic Church



Okay. But we are talking about a D&D world.







> Feudal Monarchy



As I mentioned before, you are conflating two different definitions of “institution.” You use the term “institution” sometimes to mean “organization” and at other times to mean, “concept or tradition.” I think the best way out of this is to use the term “organization” when you are referring to organizations and “ideology” or “concept” when you are referring to things that are intellectual constructs with no specific organizational being. That way you can avoid the absurdity of arguing that the following things constitute organizations through which one can exert power:







> Imperial Governance
> Taxes
> Military organization
> Public education
> ...



The fact that imperial governance existed as a universal idea in the minds of medievals did not bring it into being in the physical world. Much as medieval people believed, overwhelmingly, in the desirability of reanimating the Roman Empire, they were organizationally unable to do so except in situations where individuals were personally powerful enough to give that dream being. But the Carolingian and Ottonian attempts at doing so died as soon as a weak ruler or succession problem came along and their empires collapsed into nothingness within a few years.


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## Arbiter of Wyrms (Jun 11, 2006)

*New Feat*

*Abdicate *(General)
*Prerequisites*: Cha 13, Leadership
*Benefits*: Upon taking this feat, you permanently and irrevocably forgo half of your experience points, giving them to a designated heir.

*Heir to Power*
*Prerequisite*: Aristocrat Level 1
*Benefit*: A character with the Abdicate feat may designate you as his or her heir.


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

Arbiter of Wyrms said:
			
		

> *Abdicate *(General)
> *Prerequisites*: Cha 13, Leadership
> *Benefits*: Upon taking this feat, you permanently and irrevocably forgo half of your experience points, giving them to a designated heir.
> 
> ...



Wow! That's insanely cool. What a brilliant fix, Arbiter! Interesting, creative, etc.


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## big dummy (Jun 11, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> You are saying that there were no priests whatsoever in Norse polytheism. This seems a very doubtful claim to me. Every polytheistic system I have studied had priests.




Thats actually true, at least in early (pagan) Norse society.  One of the interesting things about the Norse, which probably says a lot about European prehistory, is that they defied the conventional anthropological model, in that while they had very high level technology (arguably best in the world in certain aspects of Metalurgy and naval architecture to name just two) and sophisticated culture in many ways, they did not have true specialists.  Norse people were multi-talented individuals.  A given individual could primarily be a farmer, yet also be a fisherman, a lawyer, a trader, and a blacksmith in addition to being a warrior.

Another of the side jobs or hobbies people adopted was in acting as religious figures during public ceremonies such as at the 'Thing' or common legal / governmental / religious assembly. 

One of the major difficulties the Christians had in converting the pagan Norse was that they had no local priest class to contend with, in the long run they ended up having to root out individual pagans and pagan families, which is partly why the conversion of the Norse ended up being so brutal.

It's also worth noting that the Norse had no word for "religion" itself.


Of course all this changed once they were converted, society began to stratify along the Christian / Feudal model, you had a professional soldier class emerge around the royal bodyguard ('Huscarls") the Baendir landholders or "Karls" who once had the equivalent legal status of an English Saxon Lord (according to surviving treaty documents) were pushed down in status to become english "Churls" or serfs.

BD


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## Imp (Jun 11, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> I think that's how most people see them. But the premise of this thread is, "How would political outcomes be different, given that the laws governing the D&D universe are different from ours?"



No, it wasn't.  Go back and read the original question!  It's much more specific.  But now we're pretty much looking at a dialogue between you and someone, so I'll step back and let you guys have your fun.


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## Mad Mac (Jun 11, 2006)

Eh, while it's true that a Feudal Kings power came directly from his control over his nobles, winning their loyalty was almost always a lot more subtle than "King Uber-Knickers the 3rd" threatning to personally go over there and start punching people in the face.   

 Land, Titles, political marriages, military strength, diplomacy...these are the tools of a successful king. It's important to be seen as strong, but that's more about who you already have on your side than the size of the aspiring King's biceps. Now, having a track record of being successful on the battlefield, that's a big plus in winning the respect of other warriors, and is good for the resume, so to speak. But again, few historical rulers power hinged completely on how many dudes with swords they could personally smoke at once, so I don't see any reason to expect a D&D world to work that way.

  It'd be more realistic to say that rulers would be expected to be capable individuals with a least a few levels under their belts, but Charisma is going to go a lot farther than being a notorious spiked chain master, imo.


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## big dummy (Jun 11, 2006)

Interesting conversation.  Heres my $.02.

In the historical Medieval World, you had Monarchies, both weak and strong, you had Empires, mostly weak (like the HRE), and you had free cities, and republics and confederacies, some weak, a few very strong like Venice or the Swiss Confederacy.

The two biggest differences would be polytheistic religion and magic.

As had been mentioned, many polytheistic systems don't do nearly as good a job at supporting monarchy as monotheistic churches do.  I think there would be more of a trend toward decentralization and democracy for this and some other cultural reasons (illiteracy and poverty don't seem to be nearly as widespread or extreme in any D&D world I've seen, Disease would be much more controlled by magic)

Magic is really the key difference though.

To be a monarch in a typical high magic D&D world, you would have to have very powerful wizards on your staff and / or a very strong allied church.  The biggest danger would come from rogue Wizards (assuming they are randomly distributed in the population) and rival churches.  In order to remain stable any kingdom or empire would have to have a strong magical secret police to root out rival religions and track down promising young wizards.  The former would have to be immediately crushed, the latter would have to be either recruited or liquidated before they gained any power.

So I would see most big kingdoms or empires as lawful neutral or lawful evil working hand in hand with similarly aligned monotheistic relgious institutions..

One other major factor is the existence of monsters and evil / anti-human forces.  Few D&D worlds seem to be completely stable or human dominant.  Some huge external threat of nightmarish enemies on the border could be a very unifiying element and could trump other poilitical tendancies...

BD


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

big dummy said:
			
		

> Thats actually true, at least in early (pagan) Norse society.



Any chance you could direct me to some reading on this. Given how anthropologically exceptional it is, I would really like to get a handle on it for my own academic work.







> One of the interesting things about the Norse, which probably says a lot about European prehistory, is that they defied the conventional anthropological model, in that while they had very high level technology (arguably best in the world in certain aspects of Metalurgy and naval architecture to name just two) and sophisticated culture in many ways, they did not have true specialists.



Very curious. Just to get a sense of the time period, what years are we talking about and how broad is your definition of Norse?







> One of the major difficulties the Christians had in converting the pagan Norse was that they had no local priest class to contend with, in the long run they ended up having to root out individual pagans and pagan families, which is partly why the conversion of the Norse ended up being so brutal.



I recall Saxon conversion being pretty brutal but did not get that sense of the conversion of the Scandinavian Norse. In particular, the Danes seem to have been a real pushover.







> It's also worth noting that the Norse had no word for "religion" itself.



No polytheistic society did. It was a term invented specifically to deal with Christianity and has no real linguistic analogue in cultures that do not practice Abrahamic faiths.


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## fusangite (Jun 11, 2006)

Mad Mac said:
			
		

> Eh, while it's true that a Feudal Kings power came directly from his control over his nobles, winning their loyalty was almost always a lot more subtle than "King Uber-Knickers the 3rd" threatning to personally go over there and start punching people in the face.
> 
> Land, Titles, political marriages, military strength, diplomacy...these are the tools of a successful king.



Indeed. Military might was a necessary condition but not always a sufficient condition to rule. However, titles, lineage and diplomacy were neither necessary conditions not sufficient conditions; they were just helpful.







> but Charisma is going to go a lot farther than being a notorious spiked chain master, imo.



In the real world, yes. In D&D, I'm not so sure. The number of people you can kill with a spiked chain in six seconds is a whole lot greater, whereas non-magical charisma skills are quite under-powered, compared to human reality.


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## big dummy (Jun 12, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> Any chance you could direct me to some reading on this. Given how anthropologically exceptional it is, I would really like to get a handle on it for my own academic work.Very curious. Just to get a sense of the time period, what years are we talking about and how broad is your definition of Norse?I recall Saxon conversion being pretty brutal but did not get that sense of the conversion of the Scandinavian Norse. In particular, the Danes seem to have been a real pushover.No polytheistic society did. It was a term invented specifically to deal with Christianity and has no real linguistic analogue in cultures that do not practice Abrahamic faiths.




I was actually working on a book for another RPG on the Norse.  The period I studied was from the initial raid on Lindesfarne (and Island off of England) in 792, through the Battle of Hastings in 1066.  When I say Norse I mean primarily the people living in what is now Norway, Denmark and Sweden in the same time period and before (they are apparently indiginous going back to the Neolithic in this area).  

The Norse changed a lot in the Viking Age though, converting to Christianity and falling under Monarchy by around 950 or so, so you might call the modern Pagan Norse era from 750 AD when their new ships started coming into use to around 950 AD when the infleunce of Continental EUrope really began to undermine their culture.

Yes the conversions of the Norse were very bloody particularly in Norway and parts of Sweeden, involving torture and a great deal of warfare.  Even in Denmark which was under the heavy influence of the HRE there was considerable violence in some areas.  Harald Bluetooth first brough it in but it took another couple of generations to sitck.

Here is part of my bibiography for the book I was working on:

Primary Sources:
Bede (673?-735) Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum. (“the venerable bede”?)
Njals Saga
Egils Saga
The Saga of the Volsungs
The Saga of the Jomsvikings
Edda, Snorri Sturluson. JM Dent & Sons 1987 (translated by Anthony Faulkes) 
Poetic Edda translated by Lee M. Hollander University of Texas Press 1962 
The History of the Danes Saxo Grammaticus (translated by P. Fisher) D.S. Brewer 1980
The Russian Primary Chronicle
Anglo Saxon Chronicle
Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh (The War of the Irish against the Foreigners)
Beowulf (Seamus Heaney translation)
Alexiad Anna Comnena

Interpreted Sources:
Stories and Ballads of the Far Past, N. Kershaw, Cambridge University Press 1921
Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology
Norse Poems, WH Auden & Paul B. Taylor (tr), Faber and Faber 1983 
Northern Lights, legends, and sagas folk tales, Kevin Crossley-Holland (ed.), Faber and Faber 1987 
The Vikings Else Roesdahl
The Vikings Johannes Brondsted
The History of the Vikings Gwyn Jones

Osprey Elite Series #3 The Vikings Ian Heath
Osprey New Vanguard #47 Viking Longship Keith Durham
Osprey Warrior Series #3 Viking Hersir 793-1066 AD Mark Harrison
Osprey Men-At-Arms Series #333 Armies of Medieval Russia 750 – 1250 AD

Historical Novels and Films
The Long Ships Frans Gunnar Bengtsson
The Vikings 1958


There are also numerous good online sources.  One of the best is probably "The Viking Answer Lady", a woman from the SCA who did a great deal of resaerch on Vikings.  Also several re-enactment groups in Europe have good material available online.

BD


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## The Grumpy Celt (Jun 12, 2006)

There are three issues (*A*, *B* and *C* below) with this discussion thread rendering it useless and one problem (*D* below) rendering it a rules violation.

*A.* The majority of the people involved in this “discussion” are ignoring – either through ignorance or deliberately – the fact that rules for governing have already been presented, both by _WotC_ and by second party publishers.  

This includes, but is not necessarily limited to; _Empire, Fields of Blood_ and _Power of Faerun._ 

However, majority of the people involved in this “discussion” are blithely ignoring these rules and chattering endless with time-wasting, space taking clap-trap as though the rules did not and do not exist.

*B.* The majority of the people involved in this “discussion” are sloppily using terms that actually have specific definitions. If the people involved are not agree on what, for example, the term monarchy despotism means (and further they refuse to acknowledge that they are not agree on the definition of the term) then they are simply talking past each other, in which case the discussion automatically becomes a narcissistic masturbatory waste of time.

*C.* As a strictly fictional construct from beginning to end, the only government’s that will ever work will be whatever ones the writer and/or DM dreams up as a manifestation of their personal despotic fantasies. Any other considerations are at best incidental and at worst offer the writer and/or DM sport in the chance to stomp on people who have the temerity to disagree with them.

*D.* The rules of this board strictly forbid political discussions. This thread should not have been started, let alone allowed to continue.

And everyone knows King Uber-Knickers the 3rd was a half-wit, but his son Fancy Pants was a real go-get 'um tyrant...


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## fusangite (Jun 12, 2006)

The Grumpy Celt said:
			
		

> *A.* The majority of the people involved in this “discussion” are ignoring – either through ignorance or deliberately – the fact that rules for governing have already been presented, both by _WotC_ and by second party publishers.
> 
> This includes, but is not necessarily limited to; _Empire, Fields of Blood_ and _Power of Faerun._



Some of us are not big consumers of published material beyond the core books. So, instead of assuming that we know of these publications, why not tell us a little about what they have to say. I personally would welcome this additional information.







> However, majority of the people involved in this “discussion” are blithely ignoring these rules and chattering endless with time-wasting, space taking clap-trap as though the rules did not and do not exist.



This is an interesting approach to non-core material. Why, in your opinion, is it a waste of time to discuss approaches different from non-core material? My understanding is that non-core material is optional and that ENWorld has offered, from time to time, a font of practical alternatives to it.

Would you be this angry if there were a discussion of additional weapons that failed to mention the Arms & Equipment Guide or From Stone to Steel?







> *B.* The majority of the people involved in this “discussion” are sloppily using terms that actually have specific definitions. If the people involved are not agree on what, for example, the term monarchy despotism means (and further they refuse to acknowledge that they are not agree on the definition of the term) then they are simply talking past each other, in which case the discussion automatically becomes a narcissistic masturbatory waste of time.



So, are we going to become like The Forge and start every thread with a set of academic definitions of terms now? 

I agree that there has been some sloppy use of terminology but, as you can see, the process of debate is actually causing us to come closer to shared and agreed-upon definitions. Is it happening slower than I would like? Of course; this is an internet forum.







> *C.* As a strictly fictional construct from beginning to end, the only government’s that will ever work will be whatever ones the writer and/or DM dreams up as a manifestation of their personal despotic fantasies.



So you feel that issues of suspension of disbelief and self-consistency do not merit discussion here? Surely what a DM dreams up needs to have some kind of relationship to the laws of cause and effect in a D&D universe, unless you believe in hand-waving on a massive scale.







> Any other considerations are at best incidental and at worst offer the writer and/or DM sport in the chance to stomp on people who have the temerity to disagree with them.



Can you clarify what you mean here? I had assumed that this thread would be valuable to those of us who build homebrew worlds to think through what range of options we have in building societies therein.







> *D.* The rules of this board strictly forbid political discussions. This thread should not have been started, let alone allowed to continue.



Correct me if I am wrong but don't all D&D worlds, both published and home-brewed have politics and religion in them? Is it really your contention that these elements of world-building should never ever be discussed here? I suppose all discussions of WOTC's published Deities and Demigods should be shut down immediately because to even mention the book violates your hyper-literal interpretation of our forum's rules.


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## Crothian (Jun 12, 2006)

The Grumpy Celt said:
			
		

> *D.* The rules of this board strictly forbid political discussions. This thread should not have been started, let alone allowed to continue.




If is true you should report the thread and let the mods deal with it.  This has nothing to do with the posters or starters of the thread, this is a Moderator issue.


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## SmokestackJones (Jun 13, 2006)

Kamikaze Midget said:
			
		

> Some examples of insititutions that have outlasted individuals:
> 
> 
> The Roman Catholic Church
> ...




You forgot the Mafia.

*-SJ*


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## Hussar (Jun 13, 2006)

Interesting stuff.

I'm still not convinced that DnD mechanics would lead to any sort of democracy though.  If anything, it would lead to anarchy.  Democracy has to be based on the idea of equality between citizens.  Whichever group gets to vote has to be equal. 

But, in DnD terms, we know for a fact this isn't true.  We have imperical evidence that this isn't true.  The entire level structure shows that Person A (Com 1) is not equal in any meaningful way to Person B (Wiz 12).  The existence of magic and levels throws any concept of equality out the window.

After all, while real world Person A might be a member of mensa, and Person B is a crack addict, both are more or less equal in many ways.  Both die when you stick a sword in them for example.  This is not true of high level characters.  Neither can physically do much more than the other.  This is certainly not true of others.  Both can use technology to do various things, true, but the same things.  Commoner A cannot fly but Wizard B sure can.

An anarchic system, where power is based entirely on the individual's ability to sway those around them (if I'm using the term correctly) seems more likely IMO.  People will cluster around the HLC simply because the HLC can protect them from threats they cannot possibly defend themselves from.


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## big dummy (Jun 13, 2006)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Interesting stuff.
> 
> I'm still not convinced that DnD mechanics would lead to any sort of democracy though.  If anything, it would lead to anarchy.  Democracy has to be based on the idea of equality between citizens.  Whichever group gets to vote has to be equal.
> 
> ...





You have the same disparities in power in the real world, and you still (at least in theory) have democracy.  Bill gates is much more powerful than I am than a Wiz 12 is over a Com 1 (arguably).  I mean, he could buy my city.  But we each have one vote.

Also, you are incorrect about anarchism.  Anarchism (as defined by actual anarchists themselves) really means a kind of radical direct democracy.

BD


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## fusangite (Jun 13, 2006)

big dummy said:
			
		

> You have the same disparities in power in the real world, and you still (at least in theory) have democracy.  Bill gates is much more powerful than I am than a Wiz 12 is over a Com 1 (arguably).  I mean, he could buy my city.  But we each have one vote.



But of course you're not going to argue you and he have an equal amount of political _power_...

As I mentioned earlier, disparity in gear value is only half the story. Disparate gear value leads to a certain degree of social hierarchy but when this is combined with dramatic physiological disparity, and when physical power almost always varies directly with gear value, the synergy between these things creates an even less horizontal society. I mean just imagine if part of the reason Gates had billions was because he could shoot fire out of his hands at people.







> Also, you are incorrect about anarchism.  Anarchism (as defined by actual anarchists themselves) really means a kind of radical direct democracy.



Government by the busybodies is another way of looking at it. 

But Hussar was talking about anarchy] not anarchism.


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## Hussar (Jun 14, 2006)

Bugger.  I always got those two terms mixed.  Thanks for the catch.  

One thought about religion in this sort of setup.  Instead of a given principality (I use the term to mean any group of people from a thorp or clan all the way to a nation state) having a number of small (ish) competing religous groups, it would greatly help both a religious group and a temporal leader to unite.  

In this concept you wind up with a sort of patron system where Religion A backs Political Leader A and together, they have the power to run the principality.  Whether or not competing religions are tolerated would vary wildly, but, in each principality, you would have one single dominant (or perhaps a very small number of dominant) religions, all with very close ties to the crown (or whatever the leader is).

Thus you wind up with something like Athens, if Athene actually existed and her priests could actually cast miracles.  A powerful city state where the rulers and the clergy work hand in hand to maintain power.

To me, this could be a very stable relationship.  Both sides benefit and neither side benefits if the other is disadvantaged.  And, neither side really benefits from the other side ceasing to exist.  If the given religion takes over the principality, their god may come into direct conflict with the god of another principality.  Most pantheons frown on this.  And, a principality without patronage is greatly disadvantaged.

Scarred Lands, in some ways, uses this system.  Each group of people has a patron diety and the patron dieties are reluctant to get involved personally with day to day issues.  Thus, there is some separation of church and state, but, both lean heavily on eachother in a symbiotic relationship.


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## big dummy (Jun 14, 2006)

Hussar said:
			
		

> Bugger.  I always got those two terms mixed.  Thanks for the catch.
> 
> One thought about religion in this sort of setup.  Instead of a given principality (I use the term to mean any group of people from a thorp or clan all the way to a nation state) having a number of small (ish) competing religous groups, it would greatly help both a religious group and a temporal leader to unite.
> 
> ...




I think this is a good analysis.

Actually in Greece you had the Oracle at Delphi who apparently had an incredible spy network.  They functioned a lot like a real magic capable priesthood, at least on the level of gathering intelligence.  Whoever they backed seemed to come out ahead, for a long, long time.

BD


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## Hussar (Jun 14, 2006)

That's a point I hadn't actually thought of.   The patron church as the Royal Spy circle.      This might actually cement the bonds between the ruler and the religion well enough that it would outlive the life of the ruler and the religious leader.  After all, sure, the HLC can come in and probably defeat the ruler in combat, but, then again, the ruler can be warned ahead of time by the religious leader and have the HLC nicely bought off/poisoned before he even gets close to the city.

Given powerful enough allies, the leader could be fairly weak, so long as his allies see the alliance as better than betrayal.  Fits nicely with Japanese history where the emperor was rarely any sort of warrior - at least in Edo period Japan - and it was the office of the Emperor which kept all the warlords in line.  No one could afford to let anyone else get too far ahead.

So, you could effectively have a low level aristocrat ruling a principality surrounded by much higher level individuals, none of which wants the other to get a leg up.


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## Doctor Bomb (Jun 16, 2006)

fusangite said:
			
		

> Aside from the Brahmin system in India, one cannot be a generalized priest; one must be a priest of a single particular god. And clearly, the D&D rules are not talking about Hindu polytheism; there is no Brahmin equivalent in D&D. Priests are always _of_ a single particular god and their acolytes and initiates are members of the cult associated with this god.
> .




Whoa up there, fusangite! The RAW specifically state that a Cleric need not have a patron deity, and can even ignore the Prime Philosophies of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos when choosing spells and domains. Also, one must include druidic faiths in this discussion - most of the tree-hugging hippies are worshiping the abstract power of Nature, which explains their 90+% different spell selection (even though there are deities in the rules that have nature in their Portfolios). 

Now, put that back in the equation (and if you are able, even though it's not core, consider Psionics - an organization of royally-funded Telepaths and Egoists? Oh, THAT's who those pale men in brown robes are that live in the Royal Church. And here I thought they were Monks that just didn't adventure that often.) and kick that argument off again. I would really love to see both you and KM kick those ideas around a bit. Certainly would lead to a different flavor of person in power.

Mostly, the rest of your arguments are fine, and I agree with your points, (and it is DREADFULLY painful to try to emulate supply and demand economics with DND rules) but I am more in line with the Kamikaze when it comes to verisimilitude in my games. 
While I don't want to go all modern and try to generate a bunch of calculator programs to emulate falling damage based on Newtonian physics and such, I do try to use as much real-world info as possible to mesh with core rules to fill in the gaps and prevent exploits by my pet POWERGAMERs. For example, string theory explains a whole lot to me about arcane magic, its source and limits, and everyone's favorite planar magic spells.  

big dummy and Hussar: Forgotten Realms has the Harper organization that (sometimes without the knowledge or consent of the nobles) fits the bill of Official Spy Network. I would think that a clerical order with domains of Knowledge and Evil would make the most effective spy network ("Interrogation, to Death and Beyond!", followed by and organization of specialist wizards of the Divination school, followed by Psions and Bards - each has it's own benefits and drawbacks, but I would think (as Hussar pointed out) that any ruler/ruling group without the benefit of an alliance/pact with one of these know-it-all groups would be overtaken by a neighbor within a generation.

Now, if I could just figure out how to get Bill Gates to give me his money, I can start working on getting fire to shoot out of my hands...


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## Snoweel (Jun 17, 2006)

Can I just re-make the point that many of you are seeming to miss.. A character's martial ability as a criterion for rulership isn't all about his ability to hurt his underlings. The main factor is his ability to hurt the things that can hurt them - ie. protection. Though, as we know from the popular form of the word, pretty much equates to the same thing.

Don't underestimate the likelihood of people defering to an individual or group who can protect them from the big, bad D&D world.


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## Hussar (Jun 17, 2006)

I would certainly agree with this.  Although, to be fair, if protection is the criterion, then wouldn't monsters make for better rulers?  There seem to be at least as many of the big ones as HLC's, so shouldn't many areas start looking to that local big nasty critter for protection?


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## Imp (Jun 17, 2006)

The local big nasty critter is probably worse.  Thinks humans are yummy, thinks their pack animals are yummy, turns 'em into mindless slaves, etcetera and so on.  The HLC's at least share some kinship with the LLC's most of the time.


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## Hussar (Jun 17, 2006)

I dunno, I think I could live with a Solar running my city.    Not every Big Bad is evil.  And, if you don't want extra-planar, there's always good dragons as well.


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## Imp (Jun 17, 2006)

Well, yeah... I figure with big good dragons, they're either mixing it up with people in their human forms most of the time (therefore usually indistinguishable from HLCs), or they're this Power that lurks in the wilderness that come to help in times of need (b/c of the whole kinship thing - they like to see that things in their domain aren't horribly screwed up, but they don't care/understand enough about people to make minutiae their daily business) – but the Power that lurks is pretty well supported by fantasy literature...

What do good dragons eat, anyway?


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## Doctor Bomb (Jun 18, 2006)

*Dietary Habits of the local BBG*

That's the rub. While I would much rather have a red dragon as my Lord and Protector, it's not bloody likely. So, I must defer to the much weaker and short lived HUMANS. Ugh. If I were a fantasy critter, I would most likely look to Treants and the like, followed by Elves as de-facto rulers - they live FOREVER compared to most races, have a reputation for being fair-minded, and aren't going to go all berserk on you if food is short.

And according to the MM, good dragons make a habit of eating jewels and light snacks of the local flora and fauna, which goes a long way to explaining the value of all those gems in their hoards, as most of the rest of the gems mined by the Small Folk must have been eaten.


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## Primitive Screwhead (Jun 18, 2006)

WHile this is a very enlightening, and interesting thread.. I think the core question was phrased poorly and started a base assumption that no-one has jumped off of yet.

The threads core assumption is that might makes right when it comes to being a ruler. 

Take a break from that for a minute and consider, while seated on the throne..what skills/abiities does a *good* ruler need {good not in terms of alignement }

Diplomancy - to convince people to go your way
Intimidate - another way to convince people to go your way
Sense Motive - to check for when folks are lying to you
Bluff - for when you have to lie back
Knowledge: Politics  - So you know what the court, barons, Houses, etc.. might try
Knowledge: Local - so you know what your citizens are putting up with
Knowledge: Religion - to keep tabs on those pesky clerics and thier ideals
Knowledge - Arcana - understand the abilities of the mages, both freind and foe
Knowledge - Dungeneering - understand the threat facing you from the critters in the world
Knowledge - War - understand the conventional threats facing you from neighboring kingdoms

A couple ways to do this, 
- be a Rogue or Bard and spend your entire career focused on ruling...
- be an NPC classed Aritoscrat or Expert and spend your entire career focused on ruling..
- be the figurehead of an organization/group that advises you on all the areas you lack knowledge of..

This means the default setup for ruling is a group of advisors who have some measure of personal power themselves and support your existance as the ruler.

The rare setup would be a single individual who is capable of all the above on thier own. If they are not capable, any one of the factions they do not pay proper attention to will take advantage of the situation to 'save' the country from the evil despot and install a fair and proper ruler..who just happens to be a figurehead for their faction.

Lots of stuff in DnD mess with what we would consider 'politics as usual'.. but not really that much. Raise Dead only affects things if the assasinated target has freinds   

One of the things that mess with 'politics as usual' is the poorly crafted non-combat rules in the D20 system. Check out Penumbra's "DYNASTIES AND DEMAGOGUES" for a much more detailed set of rules for running politics.

And.. for an interesting take on politics and death in a fantasy world, read Stephen Brust's Taltos novels..


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## Snoweel (Jun 20, 2006)

Primitive Screwhead said:
			
		

> WHile this is a very enlightening, and interesting thread.. I think the core question was phrased poorly and started a base assumption that no-one has jumped off of yet.
> 
> The threads core assumption is that might makes right when it comes to being a ruler.




Umm, no.

The core assumption is that might (of whatever sort) is a requirement for *becoming* a ruler, especially in a dangerous environment.

The ability to rule fairly or justly or 'right'-ly has historically *never* been a requirement for rulership (even if ostensibly, it is).. It's something that isn't discovered until a ruler has already been installed/taken power. I mean, 

Given that all forms of power in D&D (including skill ranks and wealth) are tied to level, it is just unfeasible that a low-level character would wield real power (not mere figurehead power) when high level characters exist.

Why would a D&D world, with its massive variation in personal power levels and its daytime-soap-opera frequency of problems, manage to have rulers who were actually fit to rule when we've rarely managed it in thousands of years of history in the relatively tame real world?


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## Primitive Screwhead (Jun 20, 2006)

Interesting.. apparently the thread has morphed a bit...


			
				OP said:
			
		

> General - D&D Political Systems
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> ...






			
				morphed said:
			
		

> The core assumption is that might (of whatever sort) is a requirement for becoming a ruler, especially in a dangerous environment.




First quote is peppered with 'political system', 'ruling' {present tense, inferred continuity}, and political power passing on to scions. All instances of a *being* a ruler...not *becoming* a ruler.

But hey, I can go with this anyway 



			
				Snoweel said:
			
		

> Given that all forms of power in D&D (including skill ranks and wealth) are tied to level



This is where we disagree. Political power is not tied to level. Large masses of commoners, smaller masses of like minded individuals, or little groups of fanatics can vie politically toe to toe with high level characters.
Consider:
- Houses with control over trade
- Guilds with control over thier aspect of the market



			
				Snoweel said:
			
		

> The ability to rule fairly or justly ...<snip>... manage to have rulers who were actually fit to rule...



My apologies if you thought I meant DnD rulers would be fair, just, or even fit to rule. The points I laid out above are items I believe a ruler needs in order to rule ably.
Whether they are spoiled despots, insane maniacs, pomopous bigots, or fair and just rulers has nothing to do with the skill set required to avoid getting tossed out on your ear by the next contender for the throne.


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## rounser (Jul 7, 2006)

> The local big nasty critter is probably worse.



Now, here's a thing....I've had feudalism and nobility described to me in simplistic terms as a bunch of people serving some others who had swords (i.e. nobles) in return for a promise that said sword-weilders would protect them from others weilding swords.

In "RAW cause and effect" D&D society, this might translate to the ruling powers-that-be stepping in (ahem, read that as "teleporting in") to stop the latest arrival ancient red wyrm (TROGDOR!!!) from burninating the countryside, burninating the peasants, burninating all the people and the thatched-roof cottages...

Again, this suggests a "hands-on" approach to conflict resolution for political figures that might at best map to kings on the front line, but not every threat is a Trogdor, so most could probably be delegated to lesser lords...."I'm sorry sire, but this year's Yggsmoor taxes went into the cost of _ressurection_ spells for the Baron and his fellows after putting down the troll invasion..."


> Eh, while it's true that a Feudal Kings power came directly from his control over his nobles, winning their loyalty was almost always a lot more subtle than "King Uber-Knickers the 3rd" threatning to personally go over there and start punching people in the face.



Ah, the Aunty Jack approach to politics...."Do as I say or I'll come over to your place and rip your bloody arms off!"  A very hands-on approach to diplomacy....would keep said monarch very busy negotiating with extreme prejudice, I'd imagine, and might lead to a "gunslinger with a reputation" type position for the monarch, where the challenges just keep on coming.


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## Hussar (Jul 7, 2006)

I agree with your view of feudalism Rounser.  Essentially a protection racket where those on top promise (and usually deliver) protection from those outside.

Although, it doesn't necessarily follow that the leaders have to do the grunt work.  Champions could certainly do it for enough reward.  Of course, there is always the risk that your champion will turn on you.  But, OTOH, the idea of the pet wizard advising the king isn't exactly a new one either.


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## rounser (Jul 7, 2006)

> Champions could certainly do it for enough reward. Of course, there is always the risk that your champion will turn on you.



Exactly.  I think that as a result, an effective D&D king would have to take a page from the githyanki lich-queen's book, and deal with anyone who reached a given level....say 12.  Maybe kill them if the power-that-be is evil, imprison or exile them if neutral, or buy them off with land and titles in return for an oath of retirement from adventuring if good (an offer that results in exile if refused).  Other possibilities include magical enslavement collars, or enchanter/beguiler monarchs who keep all their lords in line with suggestions, charms and dominations...even necromancer lords who regularly subject high level vassals to level drains to keep them manageable.

With no-one else of equivalent level around apart from maybe a few allies (ex-party members maybe), this also results in a dependence on the tyrant when a CR 20 monster drops in.  That's a nice side effect which also helps in keeping power, but runs the risk of death in combat to such threats....but real world kings died in combat too.

For reasons that Raven Crowking raised in another thread, a clamp down on magic would be more or less inevitable under such a tyrant.  Spellcasting and possession of magic items would probably be illegal, leading to a Dark Sun-type scenario where the enforcers of the law could cast, and all others would have to conceal it.  If sorcerous babies could be detected, controls might be put on them, whereas they'd definitely be put on the teaching of wizardry.

Clerics and druids might be restricted to worship of the tyrant as a god-king, so that the tap of their power could somehow be turned off if used against the tyrant....again, this begins to look like reinventing Dark Sun from first principles...


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## tzor (Jul 7, 2006)

I think there is a major assumption in the original poster's argument that was simply not true in the feudal medieval world and is generally not true in most fantasy settings.  There was no single heirarchy of authority, but instead multiple heirachies (or fonts) that often interacted with each other in exceptionally complex ways.

The best and simplest example is the relation between the King and Bishop.  The King had of course the loyalty of the lords under him, and their military powers (assuming they weren't fighting each other that is).  But the king wasn't considered letigimate unless he was consecrated by the bishop.  His "knights" although pledged to him, were made possible by the orders of the Church.  Even within a heirarchy, deligation of authority was the order of the day.

Might did make right in terms of getting your own way.  But it didn't help get the crops in, you need to get an expert for that, it didn't get goods and services from the city ports, it didn't help you form alliances with other fonts of law or nearby lords.  And since no one person can enforce the law everywhere at all times, even enforcement has to be deligated.

Then we get into blatent nepotism.  Families were large back then, and each son was given a specific task to do, in order that the estate not be too badly divided.  So the local lord probably had a brother who was an imprtant abbot, priest, or bishop somewhere, and one who probably made a name for himself as a guildsman in the city.  Connections are really key to successful management.  Under pure feudalism the equivalent of high level fighters were given their own piece of revenut generating land to manage, but in a hybrid system as was the case with the rise of the merchant class, getting paid well was often all they needed.

Finally when you get to the deligation parts it is often the case that the people with the real power are the ones who have to make the decisions on a day to day basis.  The Chaimberlain, the Commander of the Guards and so forth.  Then you add the fonts that are not visible to the general public, the thieves guild, the assassin's guild and various evil temple heirarchies, and you discover that the king is more of a pawn than a king.


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## I'm A Banana (Jul 7, 2006)

> Given that all forms of power in D&D (including skill ranks and wealth) are tied to level, it is just unfeasible that a low-level character would wield real power (not mere figurehead power) when high level characters exist.




I'd disagree that it's unfeasable. I would say that it probably doesn't happen a lot, but that it's still entirely possible for all the reasons PS posted. Loyalty and obedience come from more than just the ability of the one demanding it to punch you in the face. They could respect him because his bloodline is all aasimar, obeying him because he is obviously touched by the gods (kind of a "power by rarity of type"). They could obey him because he can command troops or champions that are high-level, and the only reason he does that is because he's the one who controlls the massive golems guarding his treasure valut that he uses to pay his champions or troops (more economic power). They could obey him because he is RELATED to powerful champions or troops (power through association), or because a prophecy spoke about his bookmark (power through fantasy magic), or because he's the only one who the dragon will deal with (power through the random chance of danger). 



> Why would a D&D world, with its massive variation in personal power levels and its daytime-soap-opera frequency of problems, manage to have rulers who were actually fit to rule when we've rarely managed it in thousands of years of history in the relatively tame real world?




Because there are ways of getting 20th level paladins to obey you when you're first level, and, sometimes, if you're 23rd level, the 20th level paladins won't obey you.


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## Hussar (Jul 8, 2006)

tzor said:
			
		

> I think there is a major assumption in the original poster's argument that was simply not true in the feudal medieval world and is generally not true in most fantasy settings.  There was no single heirarchy of authority, but instead multiple heirachies (or fonts) that often interacted with each other in exceptionally complex ways.
> 
> The best and simplest example is the relation between the King and Bishop.  The King had of course the loyalty of the lords under him, and their military powers (assuming they weren't fighting each other that is).  But the king wasn't considered letigimate unless he was consecrated by the bishop.  His "knights" although pledged to him, were made possible by the orders of the Church.  Even within a heirarchy, deligation of authority was the order of the day.
> 
> ...




QFT

I've been trying to say that but never managed to put it so well.

So many of the things that keeps a king a king have very little to do with the actual power of the king.  Direct rule could work, but only so long as those under you don't decide that a little collective bargaining at knifepoint isn't a better solution.  For you to have the "Lich queen" scenario, the queen would have to be SO much more powerful than those under her as well as any threat coming from the outside.

All it really takes to topple such a regime is a neighbour with a slighly more enlightened view of sharing power.


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## rounser (Jul 8, 2006)

> All it really takes to topple such a regime is a neighbour with a slighly more enlightened view of sharing power.



But as an earlier poster implied, the only loyalty that can truly be trusted is family, because of the mutual genetic investment they represent to one another.  Sharing power out to non-family more or less guarantees it's loss some generation or other.

That calls for adventuring families, to ensure that all the brothers and sisters are of sufficient level that they're sufficiently useful to one another as a unit, and do their jobs well enough as bishop, guildsman and knight.

This combination of "snip the tall poppies" and "keep it in the family" seems to superficially resemble the real world....the specifics of how this is implemented and to who and what are the D&Disms....that and the fact that a political opponent can scry/teleport/disintegrate you in your sleep, turn your castles to mud, or route your armies singlehandedly, making keeping the tall poppies snipped a really urgent priority for any realistic D&D ruler, IMO.

Random ideas related to this include magical crowns, coronets and tiaras that are more than just symbolic (without them the royal family is open to the more obvious magical espionage), and perhaps tournaments to help sort out who is a potential threat to the crown (although in "RAW cause & effect reality", this would be insufficient, especially when powerful nobles smelled a rat given that tourney winners kept disappearing, and more rigorous methods of finding high level characters would be required).

Such measures might seem to violate the RAW's demographics (given that a large metropolis can assume an 18th level cleric and a 16th level wizard, I gather from another thread), but the answer to this problem is obvious; they're members of the royal family.


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## Hussar (Jul 8, 2006)

And, of course, membership in the royal family doesn't have to be direct blood relationship either.  Marriage is a tried and true method for gaining loyalty.  Sure, you might be that umpteenth high level mage, how about you marry my daughter, we'll give you title and some land and let's work together?


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## rounser (Jul 8, 2006)

> And, of course, membership in the royal family doesn't have to be direct blood relationship either. Marriage is a tried and true method for gaining loyalty. Sure, you might be that umpteenth high level mage, how about you marry my daughter, we'll give you title and some land and let's work together?



That fits very neatly.  When the alternatives are exile (probably to another plane, no good exporting powerful enemies to neighbouring countries), imprisonment or death, the offer looks even more attractive.

Such measures do raise the question of whether a Paladin King could exile on this basis, compromising the autonomy of some of his people, and remain in adherence with his code and the lawful good alignment.  I doubt it.  But then, there's something about being a king who intends to stay in power that makes machiavellian measures par for the course, so good kings probably have short reigns constantly wracked by civil war and assassination attempts.  Do the right thing and you end up like King Arthur letting Lancelot into his house.

This suggests that the PCs will get a visit from the authorities once they reach a certain level....this may be just the thing to keep the campaign fresh, because they'll either end up with lands and titles and responsibilities, exiled from the kingdom (leading perhaps to planar adventures), as outlaws on the run, or seeking to take the throne.


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## The Shadow (Jan 26, 2008)

I've found this discussion absolutely fascinating, but I notice a persistent flaw, at least in how *4e* rules will affect politics.

In 4e, NPC's don't follow PC rules.  If you want the king to have 25 ranks of Diplomacy and 30 ranks of Profession: King (if there still are Profession skills, which I doubt), you just give it to him.  It isn't even really necessary to give the king a level at all.  (Though probably wise, just in case your players get uppity.


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## S'mon (Jan 26, 2008)

The Shadow said:
			
		

> I've found this discussion absolutely fascinating, but I notice a persistent flaw, at least in how *4e* rules will affect politics.
> 
> In 4e, NPC's don't follow PC rules.  If you want the king to have 25 ranks of Diplomacy and 30 ranks of Profession: King (if there still are Profession skills, which I doubt), you just give it to him.  It isn't even really necessary to give the king a level at all.  (Though probably wise, just in case your players get uppity.




If he's not otherwise statted to be as resilient as a high level PC, though, he can be charmed, fireballed, or shot dead with an arrow - or decapitated, if raise dead is easy.

I ran the Mystara Dawn of the Emperors campaign, where the second most powerful mover & shaker in the entire Empire of Thyatis is the villainous Senator Angelarian Canelocarious, a Normal Man with 4 hit points.  I gave him a ring of anti-magic and some tough gladiator bodyguards, but the PC still managed to assassinate him eventually.  

I think it's notable that in the 1983 World of Greyhawk set, not a single ruler is listed as being under 10th level!  That model still heavily influences my own campaigns; I've experimented with low level rulers but it rarely feels right and unscrupulous PCs tend to kill them & take their stuff.


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## Clavis (Jan 26, 2008)

Snoweel said:
			
		

> So I can't see a 4th level aristocrat ruling a kingdom where 15th level fighters lead the army - and there are no historical parallels here, historically there's never been a 15th level fighter. This is an individual who is truly capable of getting away with breaking the law. Hell, he's capable of *being* the law.




The 4th Level aristocrat would probably have the benefit of experience, family contacts, and social inertia on his side. Just being able to swing a sword is not enough to make people follow you. You might be personally powerful, but individuals cannot stand against an entire society. Remember, people do not know what _level_ they are. The peasents might know that Gort is a greater warrior than the local Baron, but still feel that the Baron is a legitimate ruler, while Gort is just an unclean, uncouth adventurer. People like social stability, and social stability means people _prefer_ predictable mediocrities! It why repressive social orders are often so stable - people want stability, even if it means they are oppressed by incompetents.

The 15th Level fighter who usurps the 4th level Aristocrat will probably wake up to a 15th Level Assassin (who only wants money and doesn't care about political power) stabbing him in the throat. That 17th Level sorcerer needs only to be grappled by a mob to be brought down, and neutralized.

Ruling countries also isn't always fun. The 15th Level fighter might well decide he really wants to drink and have sex with the harem girls, but doesn't care about setting a sustainable taxation  level. So he brings in a vizier, maybe a 4th level Aristocrat, to do all the boring work. Soon the Aristocrat is the one with the real political power, and soon the nominal ruler is little more than a figurehead.

In real life, skilled people are routinely controlled by people who are incompetent at everything but politics. Just ask anyone who works in an American corporation!


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## The Grumpy Celt (Jan 26, 2008)

The Shadow said:
			
		

> I've found this discussion absolutely fascinating, but I notice a persistent flaw, at least in how *4e* rules will affect politics.




It's alive! After 18-months in the grave, the thread is alive!

Heh.

Actually, Shadow, I don't think you're point will have much impact. The tendency to describe a country as a "mage" nation or "fighter" nation will continue. It is a useful way to describe a nation for fantasy gaming purposes, it will describe the bulk of the power mongers in a nation and some NPCs probably will be statted out.


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