Veeky Forumspol/

I'll be straight with you, op. Most players I've come across don't care. They just want to roll some dice and play some basic make believe. In my experience, unless the setting is really basic or common knowledge, they're way more interested in killing some bad-guys rather than concerning themselves with the socio-political structures of a colonized low-water world with 30-hour days and elliptical orbits orbiting a class O star. They're way more interested in shooting and looting.

The way people talk about their world building and campaigns on Veeky Forums sounds both counter to my experiences as a player and the rules I've learned about DMing. Why not build the worlds on the fly according to what your players do, rather than generate an entire expansive setting that your players are going to skip most of and not give a shit about?

Like, an example: the history of Texas not only makes it ripe for adventures, it actually sounds like the sort of thing that would happen to an adventuring party.
>The kingdom is letting us settle peacefully in this region, so long as we work the land and pay our taxes. What could go wrong?

I put it into as much consideration as my players make me. Because why worry more about it than they do? I set the stage for the first adventure/series of plothooks, depending on how we've agreed to open the game, and based on the types of characters they are playing, the general areal, culture, and population of the starting area, I wing it. If they skirt the surface, that's how things stay. If they dive in, then I worry about fleshing more of the nuance out. Knowing the Gnomish mayor's tax policy and attitude towards transelven homomancers is pretty pointless when the party just wants to mash troglodytes.

Rough sketches. My campaigns are settled atthe edges of society anyway so politics don't come up often.

I play with narrativists and simulationists first and foremost. For whatever reason, fate has given me one of the apparently rare groups that disdains lazy GMs. Inaccuracies and plot holes are pointed out wherever they're present and additional material about my settings is quite readily consumed. One player likes crafting setting-appropriate idioms for his characters to say, another solely plays scholarly characters and makes very frequent History rolls about aspects of the setting she is unfamiliar with. The third is the most reasonable one but even he asks a mountain of questions about the setting before he settles of a character he'd like to play in it.

So yeah, no. I don't play with the sort of people that just like to roll dice and kill things. Not because I don't want to, but because I ended up with this group and I'm pretty happy with them.

I feel like I prepare games for your group and then that other group arrives.

Nice. Sounds comfy. World building being rewarding always feels good.

The current campaign I'm running has most of it's trouble based on the conflicting politics of two nation states. On one hand you have a union of many planets in a federation that protects each of them but also has a lot of rules. On the other you have a small planet that was seriously brutalised in a war with another large nation state that was seeking to make it a vassal and thus has issues trusting it's autonomy to anyone else and has a fiercely nationalistic streak.

Neither one of them is bad but their goals conflict. The former wants the latter to join is because it sees it as the best thing for the stability of the region and this cooperation will allow them to help repair the damaged ecosystem (Due to said war) with their superior terraforming technology. The latter wants to be seen as an equal and allowed to make their own way to look after themselves as they do not want to have their culture and autonomy subsumed because they would be a single planet in a coalition of planets that all have a collective culture due to long association, which worries the former as the latter has a tendency to embrace technologies that the former considers unethical (Cloned Soldiers, Combat AI, Chemical Weapons etc).

They haven't had any major fights but there is saber rattling, the occasional skirmish and a lot of tenseness in diplomacy. Not remotely helped by the fact that there are rogue elements in the two groups intelligence agencies (The main thing the PCs are dealing with).

I wouldn’t go to a policy level, but I love seeing political intrigue being at play.

All worldbuilding is to provide a setting and theme for conflict, and through conflict, a story. I care about national and racial tensions and a few bulletpoint hot topics, so I wrote my nations as a preface to bring up these tensions and conflicts in the stories I tell, write, and think of. I don't care about taxes or individual towns, I can make those up as I go along. What I care about is how everyone feels about these beastmen mercenaries everyone sees, always depressed, and often appearing in the news after committing mass stabbings in fits of nihilism. What I care about is how people see the "crusade" forming with the intention of committing genocide against these people, for the sake of humanity or so that they would suffer no more. What I care about is what kind of banter the man from the land of magic and ivory towers who conjures magic through interpretive dance has for the fellow from Castlevania with the rim of a pumpkin around his neck and a necklace of six vampire fangs, and what kind of shit the latter would say to the former.

The goal of my worldbuilding is to achieve Britain/France tier bants and generally lay enough basis for political memes

I don't give a fuck.

I tried giving a fuck and it made me hate my players after a while. People that are otherwise smart and inquisitive will overlook "good" plot hooks because killing that last lich give them a +2, +2 Vorpal Sword of Slaying and they want to find another one for their offhand. At this point I basically throw in shit from whatever I'm reading and my players eat it up.

Gotta cross that road?
>sorry, Antaeus is blocking your path (hope you like fighting him again in Cocytus)

Gonna challenge the warlord?
>oops, Goliath steps up from the crowd

That owl you arrowed out of the sky because it followed you?
>lol that was the medicine man of the tribe you just met, you killed his soul dude

It makes writing easy. I have hit the "golden standard" of my material taking me less time to write than it does to actually play out. I can put together a session the hour before we start and have it run four hours without deadspots or losing interest.

Not an amerifat. What did go wrong?

I wouldn't say it's better or worse. It is much more intensive and time-consuming however.

Play to your group once you've figured out what sort of players they are. If they want to kill monsters, have monsters for them to kill. If they want to ask about how elvish woodworking differs from human woodworking, have answers ready for them. If they want to hatch an elaborate plot to get the party's ranger together with the blacksmith's daughter that he's been pining after all campaign, play along. Alternatively, stop being a GM for the group once you realize that the sort of games you run don't mesh with the sort of games they like playing in.

For me, the most important characteristic of a kingdom is how the realm manages it's bureaucracy, what are their tax polices and what should be done with the infants of enemies after said enemies are defeated

It's there, it's very in-depth, and it's 100% optional for players to mess with it.

I made a vague stat system for countries, to be used in a medieval and older type setting.
Stats go from 1 to 6, where each thing represents a common attitude or commonly encountered state.
I'm not gonna dump all the descriptions, so here's the basics:

Wealth: this represents the general availability of goods and the purchasing power of the state

1 (Destitute)
2 (Poor)
3(Self Sufficient)
4 (Wealthy)
5(Luxurious)
6(Opulent)

Society: this shows how sophisticated their notion of society has become
Barbarism, Clans, Autocracy, Monarchy, Universal Law, Nationalism

Education: this represents the average state of education and technological capacity
Primitive, Specialization, Guilds, Universities, Printing Press, Public Schools.

Openness: This is how favorably most people react to strangers and foreigners
Xenophobic, Unfriendly, Guarded, Rules of Hospitality, Trusting, Friendly

Stability: this represents the level of lawlessness in a region
Civil War, Anarchy, Calm, Lawful, Safe, Rule of Law

Reputation: this is how the people and rulers of a land act in business and contracts
Evil, Untrustworthy, Moral, Serious, Honorable, Ethical

Power: military might it can sustain and field
Incapable, Peasant Levies, Yeomen, Professional Soldiers, Mercenaries (as in, their troops are often mercenaries for other nations in conflict), Standing Army

Influence: - this represents both the social pull this nation has, but also its cultural importance
Laughing Stock, Meager, Accounted, Considered, Heeded, Obeyed

Long story short, Mexican Empire made the promise and then collapsed.
Mexican Republic succeeded the Empire and decided it didn't want foreigners having a claim to their land and told the Texans to fuck off.
Then came the Mexican-American war and the Alamo and all that jazz.

>How in depth do you get with the politics of your settings? Is it just "Good kingdom and evil empire"?

For me it's more "Good Empire and Evil kingdom"

Example country with snippet:

The Pelleric Empire

Old Pelleria was a juggernaught, a force of nature. It commanded the Inner Sea and all gave tribute.
But that was then. Now, the Imperial remnant is greatly reduced, but its storied history and proud
traditions still carry it forward. A discerning eye might see rot, but the Pellerians see only the
burnished arms and armor of their past and look to each Emperor to re-instate their vision.
They are Kyricist, with only a small portion of the populace Traveling the Way. They have a rich
tradition of military magic and its practice is common even off the field.

Wealth 3
Society 4
Education 3
Openness 4
Stability 3
Reputation 2
Power 4
Influence 4

So we can see this is a reasonably powerful nation, but not extreme.
Their wealth is lower than their Society, Power and Influence, but is still Self Sufficient.
While still financially ok, it's clear they command few riches and not much respect.
People view them as scheming and untrustworthy. Their strongest assets are their
military and the noble connections they have, from the blurb we can see that they are
no longer culturally dominant, but have historically been important.

If a rebellion were to gain power, it could reduce their Wealth and Stability by enough to impoverish
the country for a time and could lead to a crime-poverty-conflict spiral.

This is a pretty good system, user. I might crib it for fantasy games in the future.

zzzzz
>really consider the policies and values of a society and how it interacts with it's neighbors?
that's just worldbuilding not ((((politics))))

Ignore it entirely since its not relevant to the campaign

>How in depth do you get with the politics of your settings? Is it just "Good kingdom and evil empire"? Is there a town with a mayor running on a strict anti-adventurer platform? Or do you go deep, really consider the policies and values of a society and how it interacts with it's neighbors?

Once upon a time, I got pretty deep into worldbuilding.

Then after GMing for different groups for many years, I discovered most groups don't give a shit for it. So now I intentionally try to describe my world in as few pages as possible

I develop broad strokes, and elaborate further if any of the players express interest.

If I'm running an urban campaign, I'll usually develop things more so beforehand, so I can establish the factions, their roles in the city, and their relationships with each other l

When it comes to making Texans murderously angry at me, I've gotten a lot of mileage out of "Texas belongs to Mexico." I'm not even invested in it, it's just a fun and easy way to make them red-faced mad.

Holy shit this is good! I just have this crappy chess mnemonic.

>getting triggered by the word politics
lel, cuck

My players don't get into politics any higher or more complex than 'farmer Tod stole and fucked farmer Ben's goat, how do you guys settle the altercation', so therefore the politics are about as nonexistent as they can get

...

Fuck off with your weeb pictures, if you are using that it can't be any good.

Most of my settings go decently deep. My pet project goes to stupid lengths like tracking minor ethnic divisions, creating dynasty lines, and making political parties, but the players never see most of that. My general GM strategy is to overengineer anything, and never tell the players unless they ask or it is extremely relevant. That way I'm never surprised by a request, I just need to think of how the player's question would fit into my pre-existing plan, and the players aren't bogged down in excess lore that they don't care about.

The setting I'm working on has more complexity, but there's only one real country. That country is huge, peaceful, and boring, so the players live on the edge of it where they are safe but can travel into the wildlands to west where "countries" as just little fortified cities and castle towns ruled by ambitious adventures who got there first.

It starts out with simple framework that I expand as needed. I typically decide on how it is lead and who is leading it immediately and pick a few points that the society focuses on, after that I add on as players look into it

Slightly longer story:

Spain conquers the Aztecs and sets up New Spain, covering basically all of North America west of the Mississippi, south of Oregon, and north of Panama. That's lots of land, much of it arable, but there's all these natives living on it. Mexico, already an urban center before the conquest, is the seat of New Spain and home to most of the spanish settlers, but the Tejas province is almost completely empty of Europeans. Worse, these damn natives keep attacking their only cities in Tejas, which makes moving there an unattractive option for Jose Spaniard looking to move to the New World.

Spain had a tiny population, due to Spain itself being an uninhabitable wasteland (Spain was the only country to see a net increase in population during the age of colonization), so they opened up the laws to let basically anyone buy land in Tejas. The idea was people would settle, farm, mine, pay taxes, be good little Spaniards, and get rid of the Natives. Unfortunately, right next to Tejas was the American South. Lots of History is going on at this point involving Spain, France, England, and later America all using Louisiana and Tejas as bargaining chips in their struggles, with the end result being that suddenly Louisiana is an American State and Tejas is a Spanish province looking for people. So, they got people.

Americans come to Tejas, set up towns, they farm and mine and... not so much with the taxes. Moreover, during this time, Mexico wants to be free of Spain, and having a bunch of crazy gringos with guns means that Tejas easily clears out its Spanish governor. After Mexico gets its independence, it now has Texas as its biggest and whitest state. Of course, once you let white people have a revolution, it's just gonna keep rolling. The Texan War of Independence, a proxy struggle between Mexico and America, ends up with Texas belonging to neither. Then, Texas asks to join the Union as a slave state, leading to the American Civil War.

Care to share?

I usually stick with obvious good/evil if kingdoms are the focus, because I don't want my players getting lost.

Can somebody screencap this? This is a pretty good system.

The heavy implication of a complicated sphere of politics that at most scrapes up against the players a little.

I start with "the Empire is a bastion of light, life and civilization in a world full of darkness, savagery and horror" and introduce elements of "peasants of the frontier think the imperial nobility is out of touch, imperial legion soldiers tend to feel peasants are too backwater and narrow-minded after touring too much, and many foreigners like the idea of a government with less corruption but usually find out there's just as much here as there". I expand as needed, usually accepting a handful of the players' shared assumptions while subverting others where it makes sense to do so.

Generally speaking, more often than not the Empire turns out to be a pretty okay place but not for everyone, plagued with overzealous patriots misguided by nationalism either for the Empire or against it, and with plenty of lesser nobles manipulating the system for nearsighted and selfish boons at the expense of their people's well-being while trying to hide their actions from higher-ups and rivals who could use it as casus belli to force their way in and take over their estate or to overthrow them and put a more favorable figure in control.

2 reasons.
1) Consistency, players know what they're getting into from the get go, and it stays true. This informs their assumptions and forms the base knowledge plans are built on. A slapdash or inconsistent world leads to communication failures. Which is the last thing you want.
2) If you prepare a well thought out world, then hay 90% of your prep for literally every session of the campaign is done, and you have a strong basis for your improv.

Ideally you paint broad strokes, and add finer and finer detail the closer things get to the pcs.

Depends on the players.

...

The only setting I've ever seen that takes politics seriously is also totally dominated by the creator's fetish for elves.

You're a credit to this board and this hobby, user.

Eh, missing a bit.

Part of the invitation was "No slavery", which many Texas and Northern Mexicans ignored because the central Mexican government was either too weak to do anything or dind't give a shit.

An earlier revolt was triggered by the central government to bring the more distance provinces to heel, including getting rid of slavery.

It kinda worked, but kinda didn't, then the issue got pressed further, leading to the Texas Succession.

In a nutshell, Texans were dickwads who broke their agreements.

The slavery thing makes it look worse than it actually was, Mexico had literally been a failed state since 1816. Nobody respected their power because they didn't have any. The US would've genuinely done every person in the country a favor if they'd annexed it.

I mean Jesus Santa Anna had to basically assume dictatorial powers twice, and he WASN'T WRONG to do so. Mexico as a country shouldn't have lasted long enough for Diaz to save it. It's a miracle that it did.

I have had to draft constitutions, tax tables, and settle on banking rates for my players I could be president of a small nation with the stimulationist information I have had to add to my settings. It helps that my degree is in medieval history. once the pretty dumb fighter want to try and impress a noble lady so he went to learn about art so i had to create art trends and make up artists and of course involve the lady's favorite artist in an assassination plot. because she was his patron and a rival faction wanted to harm her reputation. and this in turn would also create demand for the soon to be late artists work. So the wizard who is the reason i have a printed tax code for each country or city they enter decided to follow the money. and found the master mind.

Given that my players are the lords of the local area, relatively in-depth. They're the masters of a province on the very border of the kingdom, so they aren't very involved in the kind of stuff you see on Game of Thrones, like the inter-group backstabbing and whatnot, but setting local tax policy to encourage immigration, handling first-contact scenarios and the like, all come up pretty frequently.

>anti-adventurer platform

Troll thread confirmed

>consider the policies and values of a society and how it interacts with it's neighbors

I don't think you do.

I've created a complex web of politics, history and characters for the civilized city-states and the barbarian tribes of my setting (up to including city-states occupied by barbarian conquerors and, coalitions, leagues and spheres of influence) but none of my players care to pay attention to it so it's mostly for my own benefit.

I wish I could pull off that kind of hat.

>when /pol/ is reddit
How many levels if irony are we pushing?

Doesn't this seem a bit more /int/ rather than the city that is /pol/?

He's fat and slow, you could probably pull it off without him catching you.

Political intrigue is boring and cliche as fuck

Current game I am DMing for is set 20 years after Alexander the Greats death. Players have to jungle appeasing all the successor kingdoms of Alexander, or risk a nation state sending its soldiers at them.

Their currently in Persia, yet still pissed of the Seleucids, in order to help the Ptolemy get a princess of theirs back, which the Selecuids stole. Oh, and they have a hard time grasping slavery, for some reason.

This is such bad larping that it's actually amazing. Nicely done

It's mostly in the background, and little bits of it show up as it becomes relevant to the players
Probably my favorite example in my own world is Dark Elves. There is no monarchy or priesthood, but rather, there are several Dark Elf crime families. Each one has multiple bases of operations, in many cities all over the world, using the underdarks network of tunnels to relocate members to and from as they need.
These crime families often have gang wars when two are trying to take over the same city, and they all are usually heavily involved in the slave trade/humanoid trafficking
Interestingly, there is one rule they all keep to, one taboo in Dark Elf society, and that is that you don't enslave the dark elves of other families. Historically every time a family did break this rule, and enslave another dark elf, it's led to a brutal, total war that left the offending family either completely genocided, deposed, or financially ruined.

Sure, imagine a chessboard and place your side of the chess pieces in the exact order as it is officially meant to be. That way you won't forget. I'm a top-down kinda guy so I start from broad strokes and then fill in the rest.
The Board: The board represents a country, a world, a planet, a galaxy, or some other big ecosystem. The board has two colors: black and white. These represent water and earth, as long as your world has a source of heat and air, you can do whatever you want with water and earth. So create continents and oceans. What else is on the board? Letters and numbers. These represent flora and minerals, so come up with at least 8 kinds of mineral, fantasy or otherwise, and 8 kinds of flora in the same way. Then you can place rich sources of these kinds on the world and place caverns, mountains, rivers, coral beds, and whatever you come up with that has to do with those.

The Rook: Now put some structures on that world like villages, tribes, cities, fortresses, keeps and such. What are these made of? They're made of the most available resource in the location. Stone quarry? Houses are made of stone. Forest? Houses are made of wood. Meteorite with living ooze that can be manipulated with the mind? Sure, an entire palace is made of that stuff. If you need to think about who is living there in the first place then you want to skip to The Knight. The Tower represents anything man-made, including roads between cities and villages. People tend to walk the shortest distance to their location but are willing to walk around small areas. Also, each piece represents a kind of person. In this case, wooden houses mean lumberjacks, carpenters, and woodworkers. Stone houses means that there are stonemasons.

Pretty in depth, yea. At least as far down as to the political system, and the top-down administration of different regional entities.

/pol/ has been reddit since late 2015.

The Knight: Also known as The Horse in some countries. It represents fauna which includes people of any kind. So put your people, animals, and other creatures on the world. What? Your dragon in a cave should've destroyed the nearby village somehow? Well, then he was probably slumbering while that village was being made. Huh? Are you thinking about a savage people with tents made from animal skins? Good, now you can think of what animal they are made of. They have some game to hunt and animals to ride on as well. That means that there are hunters.

The Bishop: It's not just about religion but about mysticism. Even science fiction has mysticism in it like psychic powers or technology beyond comprehension. If you want magic in your world then this is the time. Where does the magic come from and how are people treating it? Cults, schools, temples, cabals, covens and more are made for these kinds of things. You could ignore this piece, of course. Just like you can mitigate anything from any piece.

The King: I like to start with the king but I'm not good at politics. I hardly understand it. Still, every location needs a government whether that's a village elder, a mayor, a duke, or a bureaucrat. So pick your government. It doesn't need to be a monarchy or democracy because you could create a meritocracy, magitocracy, kleptocracy, timocracy, technocracy, etc. You need to know who's on top and why and to whom that person listens to.

Depends on if my players show interest in it. Most of the time they don't, but sometimes they become oddly inquisitive, so I have some general idea and make the rest up on the fly.

Hot damn. Wouldn't mind it if you did dump all the descriptions. Care to explain how you use this for interacting countries?

>he doesn't know

The Queen: The king is nothing but a rich peasant who convinced poor peasants that he's more important and no longer a peasant as long as they work for him. So in order for the king to stay in power without some other schmuck stealing his money and claiming to be king he needs to set some ground rules: 'I am king, and my firstborn son in line will be the next king'. That's all fine and dandy, but in order to get some kids you need someone of the opposite sex and that would be the queen. The Queen stands for law and the rules in which the people at the top stay at the top.

The 8 Pawns: It's significant that you remember 8 pawns for this part as these represent the common folk, the populace, the hustle and bustle. Inspired by Richard Bartle and Miyamoto Musashi, the pawns represent jobs and people that apply to any culture.

1 The Farmer: The farmer provides resources such as vegetables, fruit, meat, wool, riding animals, and other things. Whether it's a simple peasant or a protein cloner, it's a farmer.

2. The Salesman: The salesman is about trade and economy. What resource could one location provide to trade with a different resource that a different location could provide? What happens in between is done by tradespeople. Money doesn't need to be coin, either. You could pay in gems, or rings, or whatever.

3. The Craftsman: Take a location and name one craft that they are good at based on the large number of resources that they could deal with. Anything that shapes a material into a product is a craft. So that means that butchers, bakers, sowers, woodworkers, leatherworkers, smiths, and more are working on a craft.

4. The Soldier: Manpower! Your location needs guards, police, warriors, soldiers, knights, champions and people with the muscle and prowess to fight for a cause.

5. The Artist: What do people do for fun? Who provides it? How is their art shaped? It could be sculptures, paintings, tapestries, glass, and any other combination of materials. Pick an aspect you wrote down and see if you can come up with how the culture influences the way their art works.

6. The Scientist: Science is a catalyst for any aspect you wrote down, even mysticism if it works in your setting. How far advanced is this location? What does their science show? Steamworks? Aquaducts? Body modification? You name it.

7. The Servant: What services are there in your location? Translators, prostitutes, slaves, bureaucrats, coach riders, advisors, or perhaps oracles could work.

8. The Criminal: Anything that exists, can be done against the law. Any aspect that you have written down could have some laws for it, that means someone would like to do something while breaking that law. Theft, arson, murder, forgery, sin, necromancy, plagiarism, high treason, cons, illegal experiments, war crimes, anything can be done in an unlawful way.

Lastly is The Clock: The time of your world! Its history! The Clock is mostly optional, but some GMs want to make a calendar for their cultures and perhaps come up with some seasons.

So that's it. That's how I worldbuild and fill in the blanks later. At least this provides a solid start.

I map it out the general outline, but never really go too in depth, because the players will most of the time never even come into contact with this stuff.
i never had a group that is really into political intrigue. Local laws and their enforcement and having a general standing with a faction is pretty much the extent of politics my players actively experience.

i pick up a different political system for each country that i make, and i build their cities, culture, and villages around that and geographical location.

I write down a list of common names, surnames, city and village names along with the name of the country and their capital(if they have one)

Oh indeed. The failure of the central government to be able to enforce its own rules is what allowed this shit to happen...

But it's funny to see that the two attempts by Texas to leave Mexico were prompted because their slaves - which they agreed not to have - were being taken away.

Yes quite in depth.

I have added the neutral kingdom in. I am truly one to rival GRRM himself.

So, the big idea is it's based on the wild west, only in a fantasy world. Cowboys and Dragons. But the wild west was what it was because of the historical, geographical, and historical context it existed in. So I need to make an empire with weak central leadership to the South. I need a republic on the west coast that's just a bunch of city-states united by a common language and form of government. I've gotta have a republic full of angry crazy people in the east, that just got their independence. I need a union in the north east looking to expand west, I need a slave nation in the south east looking to expand west. I need a reason nobody's colonized the interior which is all full of natives, I need identities and tribes and societies for those natives. And, now that you mention it, I need a huge country across the sea trying to send people to live in the west, people who don't speak the language and are forced into servile roles. And I need an empire that the big one to the South is descended from, one that left a mark on the whole goddamn language of the setting. I need lots of empires, in fact, and lots of revolutions. I've got 8 or 9 wars and revolutions to juggle here.

The upside of ripping it off from reality is I don't need to think it all up on the spot. A player could ask more and more in depth questions about a country or big city or a ruler and I can rattle off facts from a history book and keep changing names and details. And if I can't remember, I'll make it up. Best of both worlds.

Are they a feudal state or do they have a strong central monarchy?