Ruling organs of power

[Bearcat]

This post is directly descended from the material on Senates in the
Republics section of my homepage and on the comments that John Cambell made
on it. Thanks John.

Not all domains are ruled by a single person. Oneexample of this type of
domain is that of the Chimeron. However up until this time no rules have
been given as to how such a domain is ruled. The following is a way in which
such domains may be handled.

Organs of power comprised of more than one person are based logic. The
bloodlline of such an organ is based upon the average of all the members of
the group. The entire group thus jointly own the regency points earned by
the council. This means that the group may not spend regency points if
unless a mjority of it is for the use.

The actions of the group, being based upon the will of the whole are
restricted to those actions that are the will of the group. Thus in order
for a member of the group to perfrom an action he must convince the rest of
the group of its neccessity. Due to the emmense amount of deliberation
required to agree on a subject the group is restricted to one action every
round, even though there are many people available in the group.

Depending on the size of a group there are two diffrent methods of trying to
convince the group to take an action. For smaller groups it is possible to
roleplay the interaction. The other method is to have the player give his
argument then make a charisma check with modifiers for a convincing (or
poor) speech and whether or not the proposed action is in the best interest
of the group. The player can also gain a bonus of +1 for each GB spent in
lobbying.

Below are specifics for different types of holdings:

Law and Province:

The domain is ruled by an aristocracy, the nobles of various houses gather
together to perform acts of diplomacy and discuss matters pertaining to
their land and the government of their kingdom. In this type of kingdom
there is generally a weak monarch who is forced to obey the will of his
aristocrats, reneissance Poland would be an example.

Guild:

The guild is a corporation in the modern sense, with a bord of directors at
the top who control the functions of the guild. Alternatively it could be
like one of the jointstock comapanies that existed in europe during the age
of exploration, with all the major stockholders guding the company.

Temple:

There is a high council of bishops that decides the course of the religeon.
If there are sufficient resources in the council it is possible for every
member to cast a realm spell during any given turn. No more than one spell
can be cast from a single temple though.

Source:

A conclave of wizards exists. This should be limited to half a dozen or so
members. As with the temple holding it is possible for every wizard to cast
a realm spell . If the spell is cast at a leyline then any sources attached
to it are unavailable to the rest the conclave, as are any leylines attached
to sources being used.

Comments, suggestions?

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[lyndon@pobox.com (Lyndon]

Bearcat,

In general I like it --- have to do some thought experiments and
number crunching (this may take a some weekends before a more
thoughtful response emerges).

I had one problem, as I read this immediately after reading a series
of posts on another list of what parts of monsters might be suitable
as magic item or potion ingredients ...

I'd suggest that those members of the senate/council/guild who are
regents (for instance they might be provincial leaders on their own),
lose one of their normal domain actions to particpate in the council.
More if they are attempting to lead/direct it. This is part of the
overhead involved in participating in a group effort that can take
greater actions than any individual members. (It might be abstracted
as regency point and/or GB taxes).


I'm most interested in this in non-Cerillian settings. In a variety
of home brew worlds I've been reading about since the '70s, there are
spells Too Powerful For Any One Mortal To Cast, which requires a
group, conclave, etc. effort. D&D mechanics for this have been
awkward. Hero system (or for that matter The Fantasy Trip) allow
fairly simply mechanics of the oder of "This spell will as a side
effect burn 100 body or strength points" (normal humans would have
about 10) "have a bunch of apprentices or allies with Aid and Healing
standing by is recommended if you want to live through it."

Hastily,


Lyndon

[Bearcat]

>I had one problem, as I read this immediately after reading a series
>of posts on another list of what parts of monsters might be suitable
>as magic item or potion ingredients ...
>

I really don't understand what this has to do with ruling organs of
power... or do I?

>I'd suggest that those members of the senate/council/guild who are
>regents (for instance they might be provincial leaders on their own),
>lose one of their normal domain actions to particpate in the council.
>More if they are attempting to lead/direct it. This is part of the
>overhead involved in participating in a group effort that can take
>greater actions than any individual members. (It might be abstracted
>as regency point and/or GB taxes).

Point taken, I really love it when people give suggetions because I always
forget things. Here is what I added to the version that made it to my web
site (under the new title of "Domains ruled by councils" ;) :

If a member of a council group is also the regent of an independent domain
then he must choose between participating in the council or taking a domain
action for his domain. He may not due both, remember, many of the people in
the Continental Congress in the American colonies did not attend because
they were taking care of their private affairs. The same holds true here,
especially if the council and the councilor's domains are based in different
cities.


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