Fantasy Governments

What types of governments do you fa/tg/uys implement in your settings?

Usually when I make an evil nation, it's usually an authoritarian government or savage tribal society. Whereas when I make a benevolent kingdom I go for a socialist democracy or some kind of republic.

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>Socialism in a feudal world

This makes me madder then your obvious bait.

Glorious Roman Bureaucracy.

>implying I'm baiting
>implying a fantasy where magic exists couldn't sustainably have a socialist society

>Socialism is free stuff

>tax policies

...

Socialism as a concept is developed as a solution to the so-called failings of capitalism, which developed after feudalism.

Having socialism in the high middle ages is anachronistic as fuck.

>spell: create water
>echanted item: magic rations
Off the top of my head.
Why wouldn't a world where an infinite resource of food, water and energy exist wouldn't there be a world without want?

>What is human capital.

>real world history applies to a fantasy
>anime posting

>fantasy equals feudalism reeeee
>fantasy equals middle ages reeeee

Pls get an imagination guys.

>what is anyone with a decent intelligence score and enough study can indefinitely feed a village

except in socialism the wizard who performed this act can charge however he wants.
In communism you can get those sweet gibmedats

>communism = socialism

>Create Food and Water is a level 3 spell that makes enough food to feed 3 people.
>Its also a Cleric spell, meaning the gods choose how many there are regardless of study.

In my setting a Winter Hag, a Nosferatu, and a Phrenic Scourge are all playing the "power behind the throne" in different nations in an attempt to play out fantasy World War 1

This time Franz Ferdinand is a Dwarf

>only D&D spells count

Thank you for actually responding to the thread
You too I guess

> I never have magic in my settings.

> I thought of my setting's governments from the ground up.

> This means they reflect the environment they are a product of.

> They do not look like I extracted them from real life and artificially plopped them into the setting.

> Because socialism is a specific concept from our world, rooted in our history.

> I did not go 'hurrrrr im mke soshlizm'.

> Because I'm not a fag.

> Like you, OP.

Seriously though, I'm interested in seeing what original governments people have made in their settings, if anyone here has done that.

>OP mentions D&D shit
>Gets surprised when he gets D&D answers.

You are on the right track though. Only widespread magic that can literally poof things into existence can make such a stupid system as socialism actually work. Even Star Trek knew that.

>those spells are only in DND
>no other ttrpg has magic items
Nice bait

In one of my settings most of the largest powers are ruled by extremely powerful immortals who consider themselves gods.

Many of the nations are thearchies [rule by gods]. Which doesn't necessarily translate into theocracy [in fact none of them are theocracies as well].

That's very interesting. Are the gods very hands on or just kinda have a shrine and intervene when necessary?

I thought I made it clear that I was trying to separate the two. I guess not.

>>anime posting
Reminder: This is an anime imageboard.

That actually is quite interesting. I'm sure your world is pretty fucked up if Gods are constantly present and warping it, though.

>anime image board
>Traditional Gaming
>Veeky Forums
>not an Armenian Automotive Image Board

I've been world-building just a little hobbit-country for a while, it pops in and out of my interest. It's pretty much a constitutional monarchy, with a monarch, a president/prime minister, and a three-chambered congress, one is inherited, one is appointed, and one is elected. It has tons of bureaucracy.

Veeky Forums is the traditional games focus board of the anime imageboard.
I wish I had the image on me. You know the one.

Enlighten me

Well here's the thing. The world basically developed like earth. There was animals evolving, dinosaurs, etc. There was of course fantasy monsters too [dragons and the like], and a Stone Age anachronistic mess going on.

Magical gemstones somehow came into existence/fell from space/whatever, turning several of the animals into humanoids [apes into men, hawks into hawkmen shit like that] who were immortal and extremely powerful. The descendants of these beings became the mortal races.

Because the sentient races were primitive, they called the immortals gods. They aren't interdimensional beings, they're more like Highlanders. They eat food, live in houses, and shit in the woods until the toilets were invented.

Thousands of years passed, and now most of the early gods are dead, this history has been forgotten by all but a few of the gods who remain, and while most nations are ruled by mortals [usually powerful and heroic mortals, but mortals] every superpower is ruled by one of the remaining gods. And while they still maintain religions, they've secularized a considerable deal, usually using titles like king over god or goddess.

So basically the setting has reached the modern era [cars, phones, skyscrapers, etc] and the leaders are these immortals.

I'm sure this world is a lot more peaceful, since you have the wisdom of immortals leading the world's nations.

My setting is a bit similar. Powerful entities have through the millennia styled themselves as a pantheon of the whole world. They go into lengths to keep up the charade of being awesome, eternal and invulnerable to mortals. The 'gods' are not friends or allies, but they restrict conflicts to proxy wars among mortals. Some of them are dormant, some very active, so naturally there are several nations that are led by loyal priests, faithful monarchs, divine messengers or a combination of those. Some nations have a fully mortal leadership, but still acknowledge and fear/respect the gods.

I always enjoyed rolling up governments in Traveller - gives such a variety (along with the other elements of a world) You could look at pic related for some inspiration. If you want to roll a random government, first roll 2D6-2 to generate a population. Then roll 2D6-7 + your population to generate the government.

Well yes and no. The year is 1017 [measuring time from the founding of the current largest superpower] and there's a time traveling cult going around trying to end the world on the symbolic year 1200 [midnight] by using a giant worm god-monster which is basically filled to the brim with these Monolith Godstones, letting it warp reality so much it pulls the sun closer to the earth [don't think about it too hard] causing a sunscorched fallout future until the world finally is destroyed entirely around the year 1800.

The only people who can stop them are a group of famous and not-so-famous people from the fictional world's history gathered from across every era of time.

Which is why that thread talking about a viking anime got deleted from here a couple days ago. It turns everything isn't in fact Veeky Forums-related.

>socialism
>stupid system
Star Trek has communism btw
youtube.com/watch?v=8rh3xPatEto

youtube.com/watch?v=pzqW0YaN2ho

Star Trek totally pussies out of their post-currency/post-scarcity setting when they introduced goldpressed latinum.

Well at least there is post-scarcity on Earth

Veeky Forums just has shit janitors. And it was a manga, not an anime.

>They go into lengths to keep up the charade of being awesome, eternal and invulnerable to mortals.
Are they not really so?

Socialism is even older than feudalism, or at least the big rise of it. Roman Republic/Empire free grain edict yo. Oh, and I guess Imperial Han China. That shit was in the BCE.

socialism != state power
communism != complete state control

I just recommend going through labor history--like, actually research 's labor history and how welfare, regulation and reforms come about, and how workers had to many times use force to be treated like humans.

pic semi-related: bunker that was used by private companies and police, among many, that were waiting to mow down the *striking miners* @ the Battle of Blair Mountain (1921)

Corrupt magecracies.
Very corrupt magecracies.
Reasonably corrupt theocracy.

Since those are the only governments with access to advanced magic their lands are more productive and their economy is not shit. Doesn't make them communist or democratic or other bullshit, it's all about the noble bloodlines squeezing their domains to produce more power.

The rest of the continent is freehold barons being hurr durr muh freedom from magez lol but they fold to natural disasters, fighting with each other, and pretty much anything else -- and most manors run as tyrannies anyway.

Communist/benevolent democracy fantasy governments are a sure sign of a weak GM

>What is a monestary (just for the monks)

(Geronto)Theocracies mostly. Those older and of higher religious rank rule. The tenets of faith and the particular monastic order have a precedence over everything.
Unless you believe that somehow lowest rank and youngest monks have a say in how anything is managed and receive a proportionate amount of goods produced, in which case I have a bridge to sell to you.

I use kings and feudalism cause it's easy and my players wouldn't understand any other governments.

>Corrupt magecracies.
>Very corrupt magecracies.
Wizards, no sense of right or wrong.

>Unless you believe that somehow lowest rank and youngest monks have a say in how anything is managed and receive a proportionate amount of goods produced

Say in anything? No not so much, a proportional share in the produce, yes. In benedictine (probably also fransican but I don't know a lot about those) monasteries every monk got the same amount of food, wine/beer and other stuff.

To mortals, yes. One of my themes is that nothing lasts forever though, so it all depends on the scale. One of the gods is actually a very powerful mortal, the others powerful spirits of various origins.

Sometimes mortals get close too close to 'god-level' power for comfort and the 'gods' have to make an example out of them to remind mortals that reaching out of your place is bad.

The only socialism that can sustain itself is National Socialism. /derail

Yes because there are so many Nat-soc countries around right now right?

In a world with powerful magic, magocracy is probably the only possible government.

Government is violence and who has more capacity for violent than wizards.

Do an evil democracy already

Hereditary feudal monarchy has a succession crisis -> the monarchy abdicates to powerful heroes -> the heroes die and leave behind hereditary lines which compete in an ugly, unspoken past that most people aren't aware of today -> single line comes out on top, hereditary feudal monarchy -> succession crisis -> abdication/heroes elevated by popular consent

The Good Kingdom of the setting has been ruled by the heroes who defeated the BBEGs of The Great War thirty-three year prior.

All but three of the Good Lords have died of a withering curse by the start of the campaign. They were powerful and popular in their time, but their rule now continues through its symbolism more than its efficacy.

An upstart noble won The Great War on the ground and since holds most of the "real" power in the realm. He appears ready to take the kingdom when the last Good Lord dies without an heir or successor(s) apparent, at which point it appears poised to become a very united feudal monarchy.

That's all succession though. As for government, it's pretty fantasy-bog-standard in the Good Kingdom. Mayors, sherrifs, lots of municipal control except where otherwise overridden by the local low-level count or baron (though there's only one actively held barony in the kingdom and the players are in the process of overthrowing it.) Taxes and control have been limited by tradition and ambition -
The heroic Good Lords, heroes though they were, were not rulers realpolitik.
The surrounding lands offer little incentive to expand and little threat since the Great War, but the ambition of whoever rules next might disagree.

>Hurr no money
>Trade still occurs
>Gold-pressed latinum is a valued commodity
>Energy is still a thing, as is matter
For FUCK'S sake... As long as there is limited anything; time, resources, energy, there will be value. That's what money IS; an expression of value!

By Star Trek abandoning the concept of money, that means they have literally stated that nothing has any value anymore. That means they are SO post-scarcity, they are effectively omnipotent gods who can coalesce and dissipate matter and energy in infinite quantities at will! Roddenberry's whole idea of economics is so fucking childish that a first-year student could destroy it!

Well, not really fantasy but more sci-fi, but if you have a fantasy race that has 'mind internet' type of hive mind you can have a 'democratic monarchy'. The chosen leader is the most powerful telepath and empath, and their power spikes up hundred-fold after coronation, which enables them to feel and think everybody else's thoughts and feelings, becoming 'possessed' by the 'soul of the nation'.

tl;dr: the leader becomes the literal will of the country

All my good governments are benevolent monarchies or capitalist republics.

All my evil governments are Marxist derivatives or cruel dictatorships.

Fascists are neutral nations.

They are effectively omnipotent gods. They chose not to annihilate other species out of courtesy.

Usually some form of kingdom.

>>Usually when I make an evil nation, it's usually an authoritarian government or savage tribal society. Whereas when I make a benevolent kingdom I go for a socialist democracy or some kind of republic.

>Socialist ''Democracies'' in a sword and sorcery setting.
>Deeming it as good at that.

Pffft. Please move to China if you are such a devout Maoist.

A standard fantasy with superhuman strenght and magic would function under even tighter feudal structures which may have developed in the same vein as Ming-dinasty China.

When an individual can claim enough power to subdue thosands of other people on his own while that power remains unobitainable to the masses this ensures a strict hierarchical structure with city states (the largest area one could rule with personal power alone) ruled by their respective military leaders and families that recriut talented individuals or train them up from young.

Governments i have in my standard sword-and-sorcerry:

>City states run by powerfull sorcerrer bloodlines or mage families.
>Small city state republics which don't have a powerful sorcerrer family in charge yet.
>Small countries run by orders of Mages, Knights, Druids or other such individuals of high personal power.
>Large Kingdoms with Mercantile policies, nobility and a King enthroned by divine right in the literal sense.

And all of these are capitalist because money is just a means to simplify trade of goods and nobody tolerates freeloaders, not even the nobles.

Full disclosure, I don't pretend to understand these concepts in and out, but I'm using these attributes from Wikipedia as they fit. In my current homebrew, the country the characters started in is a Genio-monarchy that has become a world power despite it's small size due to it sitting on a monopolic concentration of a rare resource (basically magic uranium), which fuels their industry. The King names a successor but they have to be vetted by other high-ranking officials.

To the south is a scattering of tribes, that every once and a while fall under the banner of a singular warlord with the balls to keep people in line. They have ancestral connection to a lot of land with the magic uranium, but the northern country has since established a pretty strong foothold that the tribes can't deal with on their own.

The next place they'll visit is a meritocracy where they plot how to try and steal some of the magic uranium market.

There was only ever one, and it was such a threat to the balance of power that the rest of the world had to knock it down, for fear of there own populations going "gee, those Germans sure have established themselves a pretty cool system of governance and economy, let's try that shit out for ourselves."

Protip, in real life, the good guys don't always win...

>Nazi Germany
>good in any way
Fuck off, finn autist

I don't do good and evil societies. I would never make a fantasy setting an allegory for modern politics either.

Nazi Germany may have started NatSoc but they quickly turned fascist mate.

And when Lenin heard that Mussolini had taken control in Italy he exclaimed "Finally, a real socialist in Europe!"

>That shit was in the BC
ftfy

thks is spme trashy bait

It's hilarious, because he never touches on tax policies too.
I guess he should listen to his own criticisms. Or realize that no one cares about fictional tax policies.

So Chrono Trigger?

Yeah, so this bridge I have is large, perfectly mossy and is really really cheap. There's no reason to look at it, just buy it before some other user does.

>Wizards, no sense of right or wrong
Humans, no sense of right or wrong.

Fascists were always socialist.

Fascism and Socialism are closely related ideologies with no clear boundary between them. They drew from the same philosophical sources, often came to the same or similar conclusions, and in practice governed countries exactly the same. It's also been noted how many fascists took inspiration directly from Marx, and today modern Socialism seems to borrow many of its ideas from the Fascism of the past.

Several proto-socialist movements existed during feudalism. Check out the German Peasant's Revolt.
social democracy ain't socialism

Oh also, to actually answer OP:
lotsa different types. I've got a lot of weird anarchistic societies from when I was really into /leftypol/, but thankfully I was edgy enough that they were bad/neutral guys.
There's a city-state hegemony style thing within one cultural group, similar to the Greeks. These guys are the bad guys of the setting, insofar as they're the only dudes to do American-style slavery. And also they worship star-gods who eat humans.
One of the major powers is a huge meritocracy under the power of the Prophet, kinda like the Ottomans taken to eleven and given Bolshevism.
Then there's the obligatory crumbled empire which swears up and down they're always ruled by the same God-King, just with each generation being a different facet. They're close to right.
I love contradiction, so one of my major setting-locations is ruled by a shitty tribal "empire" trying to Nation State it up, with the help of their not!Euro buddies/exploiters.

Aren't Reality-bending wizards and katana-wielding drow rangers pretty unrealistic too, user?

>those Germans sure have established themselves a pretty cool system of governance and economy
The Economy was borked all to hell. If the Nazi´s hadn´t started pillaging other countries by 1939 they would have been in an economic crisis by 1941.

You can say a lot of thing about Nazi Germany but not that its economy was good. Without plunder-money things would go to shit

There's different degrees of realism. There's violating physics, which people are fine with. Then there's violating logic, which by and large they aren't.
Something which arose out of capitalism existing even though the setting has never had capitalism is a whole different level of unrealism, compared with wizards and elves.

But that's academic, because in fact socialism arose out of feudalism.

That would sum Lenin up, yes.

so a clusterfuck ruled by an elite like the UK
Sane sytems leaders that can be removed without anyone dying

>the Queen
>leader
lol

what is china?

its who the armed forces swear allegiance too and most of the police forces.
and the courts
and every single elected representative that gets to speak
not to mention the amount of land directly controlled by their estates

and texans swear allegiance to a flag

Capitalist af

They're quite proud of it.

I was going for British. I mean, they are hobbits.

>Talking about socialism on Veeky Forums
capitalist shithole, it was a mistake