I. Dear Reader, I’ve watched two separate Youtubers both make excellent videos on the subject of politics. But they both talk about roughly the same thing which is a bit strange to me. The first is Matt Colville and his series on politics (starting with
I'm really interested to see the rest of the series you are planning on politics! I have tried to feature a variety of political styles (that is to say the structure of the society and it's power structures are different than ours and different than vaguely medieval fantasy standards) in the worlds I've set my games and many rpg systems simply can't support them. Interested to see if you know of other games (or other ways) to incorporate these different political structures.
Thank you! I'd love an example of a system that didn't jive well with a political system in your game if you can remember any. Would be super useful in the article!
The example most at the forefront of my mind is my long-running DnD campaign where the home island the party was from was extremely communal, didn't use currency for trade and jobs and stuff, and were led overall by a group of elders - but even their decisions were more general guidance that the people needed to buy into to work. No standing army, no guards, etc. - and in DnD (we were playing 5e) so much of that just doesn't work with the system. Everything is broken down into gold cost, gold you will earn, etc. One of the PCs was one of the very first artificers in the world (magic was recently discovered) and we had no real good way to implement 5e's very basic crafting system into that setting. It's all about time plus gold costs for supplies and stuff. I'm sure there are games that could do some of these aspects better but I would love to see games in the future have a bit more of a wide spectrum of the kind of politicial/social structures that can be in place in their worlds.
I'm really interested to see the rest of the series you are planning on politics! I have tried to feature a variety of political styles (that is to say the structure of the society and it's power structures are different than ours and different than vaguely medieval fantasy standards) in the worlds I've set my games and many rpg systems simply can't support them. Interested to see if you know of other games (or other ways) to incorporate these different political structures.
Thank you! I'd love an example of a system that didn't jive well with a political system in your game if you can remember any. Would be super useful in the article!
The example most at the forefront of my mind is my long-running DnD campaign where the home island the party was from was extremely communal, didn't use currency for trade and jobs and stuff, and were led overall by a group of elders - but even their decisions were more general guidance that the people needed to buy into to work. No standing army, no guards, etc. - and in DnD (we were playing 5e) so much of that just doesn't work with the system. Everything is broken down into gold cost, gold you will earn, etc. One of the PCs was one of the very first artificers in the world (magic was recently discovered) and we had no real good way to implement 5e's very basic crafting system into that setting. It's all about time plus gold costs for supplies and stuff. I'm sure there are games that could do some of these aspects better but I would love to see games in the future have a bit more of a wide spectrum of the kind of politicial/social structures that can be in place in their worlds.
This is a great point, thank you.