In every fantasy setting, there's always a white washed feudal system where peasants happily work their land while being seemingly literate and educated while overseen by similarly fair lords. If there's an exception to this it becomes the complete opposite where a clearly evil lord is oppressing the completely ignorant and helpless peasants.
In sci fi settings its the same thing but replace the lords with democracy/corporations depending on if its good or bad, and peasants with citizens. Are there any interesting ways to mix up the governments in your games, fantasy or otherwise.
>Communist Agrarianism
>Tribal Nomadic Mercantilism
>anarchy
>pic related, technocracy movement.
I had a city state in a D&D game with an unusual method of government. Every citizen of the city wore a crystal ring attuned to them, which contribute part of their psychic energy to a unified psychic construct which acted as a benevolent dictator. It knew the minds of all its citizens, understood their wants and needs and always acted to be the best ruler it could, as well as being a terrifyingly powerful psychic entity if the city was attacked. It brought up some interesting questions of free will, privacy and personal freedoms, but my players eventually decided it was generally a good thing, and one of them actually retired to the city state after it was over.
Part of the campaign was them tracking down and destroying a conspiracy to try and take control of the construct by amplifying the input of a select group of individuals, using psychic powers to conceal their intentions from the unified construct until it was almost too late.
>In every fantasy setting
You can do what you want in your stories/games, but don't pretend like you're the first one to ever come up with the idea of realpolitik fantasy governments.
>>43594581
Theofascism (clerical fascism)
>>43594581
Democracy. No, really. Not current definition with representatives and politicians. Old definition.
Anyone who wants to live in the borders has to be a registered citizen. If you are a registered citizen there is a chance you will be chosen for legislative duty, like jury duty. You get a small allowance and decide stuff for the country as a whole along with other randomly chosen citizens for a time.
Nobody is in charge or possibly the system is.
>>43594642
So the telepathic matrix from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri?
>>43594676
As if you've played a game that even vaguely resembled actual feudalism.
As if any of us had, people actually learn about the medieval age either don't want to add that to their fantasy or they know enough about the era to know it isn't particularly interesting without shitting on it.
INB4 repeat the communism thread where people argue if Orwell was using double speak when he said he was a socialist.
Realistic Republican Democracy has plenty to it, especially if you pick and choose from the wackier ones in real life.
Not a lot of fictional settings have a political arena where corporate, public, and religious interests can all intersect without turning into a bloodbath or prompting laws against eachother.
It might be interesting if nomad orcs started settling down and elect their chieftains into power and suddenly your murderhoboism is getting discussed as being 'out of touch' with the voters.
Though don't be a dick and railroad them down your ideological magical realm.
>>43594581
>all those empty seats
feelsbadman.exe
>>43594581
You don't necessarily need to make up new systems, just pick ones that are underrepresented in fiction.
Like the Venetian system of elective monarchy where the monarch was selected by a complex electoral process among the city's aristocracy, rather than the title passing through heredity.
>>43594581
>peasants
>happy
>litterate
not in my medieval fantasy
>communist agrarianism
Something like that is literally only found on ridiculously small scales and usually gets wrecked by the feudal class.
>Nomadic Mercantilism
Mercantilism relies on exporting produced goods and importation controls
>Technocracy
You could live in China
>>43595183
Communist Agrarianism is also known as Maoism. I just didn't want to attract the butthurt economics majors.
>>43594723
The hell are you talking about, real feudalism is far more interesting than the stuff that usually shows up in fantasy.
>>43595223
Thats my point bro, but instead popular opinion makes sure that the demand is in either end of the bullshit spectrum when it comes to fantasy.
No DM I know wants to run something like it, and while i'm sure I could minimize the history lesson stuff I also don't feel like learning a new system to play it in.
>>43594723
>As if you've played a game that even vaguely resembled actual feudalism.
Feudal governments weren't identical.
