I have found, in past, that the best way I have for making up new kingdoms/principalities/nations for a storyworld is to just go spelunking for the oddest possible way of creating a government- then trying to come up with a way to make that work. We've got a couple good examples of kleptocracy out there already (Thieves' World & Lankhmar both come to mind). Rule by the _______: fill in the blank repeatedly. 1: Rule by the chickens. Okay, that one doesn't work... 2: Rule by the psychic. What would a psyocracy practice? Obviously they're well-suited to rule, since those who are not psychic couldn't lie to them, perhaps... 3: Rule by the accursed class of religious outcasts. This one intrigues me: what does that tell us about the religion? Are they withdrawn eremites, the further they get into their religious order? Are those who are shunned the only people who are permitted to involve themselves in the affairs of man? 4: Rule by the childless: Why by the childless? What benefits are there to having people without children ruling?
That's how I always do it, though: come up with a bunch of completely bizarre arbitrary patterns of rulership, then make something up to explain it. Nobody's going to notice that the person they deal with most often in Kalabastan and Margyan are the same person essentially, if Kalabastan is ruled by a cabal of powerful atheists, and Margyan is ruled by the One Church of the Other.
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Date: 2004-12-24 12:38 am (UTC)Rule by the _______: fill in the blank repeatedly.
1: Rule by the chickens. Okay, that one doesn't work...
2: Rule by the psychic. What would a psyocracy practice? Obviously they're well-suited to rule, since those who are not psychic couldn't lie to them, perhaps...
3: Rule by the accursed class of religious outcasts. This one intrigues me: what does that tell us about the religion? Are they withdrawn eremites, the further they get into their religious order? Are those who are shunned the only people who are permitted to involve themselves in the affairs of man?
4: Rule by the childless: Why by the childless? What benefits are there to having people without children ruling?
That's how I always do it, though: come up with a bunch of completely bizarre arbitrary patterns of rulership, then make something up to explain it. Nobody's going to notice that the person they deal with most often in Kalabastan and Margyan are the same person essentially, if Kalabastan is ruled by a cabal of powerful atheists, and Margyan is ruled by the One Church of the Other.