Political System

[MrStabby]

I am considering a more intrigue and politics heavy game - probably next year realistically.

Trying to sort out the setting, I wanted to develop the political system in which the intrigue can take place. I am thinking of using a somewhat labyrinthine system of committees with interlocking powers held in check by other committees and subcommittees. To "win" at politics the players will have to work out which system of bribes/threats at what level will get them the votes they need. The interaction of wealth and eligibility to be elected to different positions should allow for some skulduggery to remove political opponents.

The ability for rich and poor to be elected to different positions should create a tension between the two elected bodies, likewise the slightly different ethnic makeup of the electorates for each body may also cause tension.




Consul
The head of state and head of government is the consul. The consul is elected from the senate by the parliament to serve a 4-year term, coinciding with the parliamentary terms. The consul appoints senators to the 5 upper committees: commerce, diplomatic, law, Arcanic, and Theologic. The consul also appoints the chair of these committees. As a senator may not serve on more than one committee a consul is very often required to put multiple political opponents on committees. On occasion where the senate is hostile to the consul the consul may end up ceding one or more committees to their political opponents.

The consul holds a tiebreaking vote on any committee as well as holding the right to instruct a committee to convene an acting subcommittee to address a specific issue.

Committees
The commerce committee is the most powerful committee and is responsible for trade, agriculture and industry as well as taxation. As it oversees the audit subcommittee it holds considerable political power. There are 10 members.

The diplomatic committee is responsible for oversight of external affairs. Espionage, military readiness and the prosecution of war as well as maintaining favourable relationships with friendly nations. Significant changes in foreign policy require a vote, not only of the committee members but also including the chair of each of the four other senior committees. There are 10 members.

The law committee is responsible for overseeing the legal system. Most specific law-making is either made as a devolved regulation by the appropriate subcommittee for a discipline within the purview of another department or is delegated to a subcommittee subordinate to the law committee. The law committee may take a hand in passing any law and will take a role in any constitutional question, when this happens the vote is expanded to include the chair of each other committee. This committee further acts as a supreme court to the Republic. Law enforcement within the Republic’s borders also falls under the purview of the committee. There are 8 members.

The Arcanic committee is responsible for arcane research, arcane education and maintaining the scholarly pursuits within the Republic. It tends to hold low stature due to its narrow functions however it can become important when called upon. Typically, it is used as a vehicle to give a political voice to the powerful mage academies. In areas of arcane lawmaking the Arcanic committee may overrule the law committee and will regulate rules on the use of magic within the republic as well as investigating and reporting on magical events. There are 4 members of the Arcanic committee.

The Theologic committee fulfils a similar function to the diplomatic committee, however managing relationships with entities in the spiritual rather than temporal realms. In a similar way to the Arcanic committee this is seen as a way to grant a political voice to powerful temples. There are 8 members of the Theologic Committee.

The senate
The senate are elected by popular vote within a district, however to stand for election a citizen must fulfil one of five criteria. Each prospective senator may choose any district to stand for election in.
1) Own and operate merchant ships of displacement greater than 35,000 tones
2) Own arable land of area greater than 20,000 square kilometres (these are measured and recorded by the powerful audit subcommittee – the land area was instituted to devolve more political power to rural regions, often occupied by other species/ethnicities who would otherwise lack a political voice. The arable condition was applied to provide an incentive for draining the swampland to improve food security)
3) Be a head of a recognised faith
4) Be the chancellor of a recognised mage academy
5) Be given the title of Marquis in recognition of public service to the Republic (nomination is made by the consul and ratified by the senate). These seats – faith, academy and marquis are granted and do not require election
Currently the senate holds 139 senators: 56 from merchant shipping, 35 from arable land, 25 high Priests, 14 Chancellors, 8 who have been granted the title of Marquis. The size of the house may change slightly through time as the number
Senatorial elections are held every 6 years and three years after the parliamentary/consular election. Whilst there are limits placed on who may stand for elections there are no wealth limits on who may vote. Any resident species may vote for the senate.

Parliament
Parliament is the lower house in the Republic but still holds considerable power. Members of parliament are the basis of the subcommittees which are convened to manage the affairs of the republic. They act as elected civil servants fulfilling both an administrative and political role. Members are also responsible for electing the Consul in a secret vote so their views cannot be discounted.
A subcommittee can be overruled by its convening superior committee unless there is a two thirds majority that supports the motion or the convening committee moves that the motion of the subcommittee falls outside of the defined purview of that committee. Adjudication falls to the jurisdictional arbitration subcommittee of the law committee. The power of overrule of a superior committee means that the committee will generally ensure that there are enough friendly votes in the subcommittee to be able to force an overrule.
There are 200 members of parliament, each is elected from within their resident district. There is no restriction on who can vote nor who can stand for parliament by wealth however only humans and halflings may vote for members of parliament.




Are there any obvious consequences to a system like this? Am I getting too involved (I haven't done a political game before)? Would any players even care if there was a more detailed political system? Does anyone have any advice?

[Mendicant]

My experience is that most of my players don't usually care about this level of detail, but very frequently one or two might. If that's the case for you, a political system is like a world map: it doesn't hurt for *you* to know the whole thing, but stick to the regional map for the most part in-session. An adventure should zoom in on one ministry or a few politicians in one part of the government, with implications for the wider world. You can even lay the system out for yourself as a map: instead of geographical regions, you chart parts of the government, and the fights, physical or otherwise, take place where the BBEG is trying to acquire more territory.

For the people who are interested, make sure you have a clear breakdown available online somewhere easy to get to, maybe organized as a wiki if you're up to it. That way, whoever wants to really dive into the world can at their leisure, but it doesn't chew up game time where you're talking to two people and the others are checking their phones.

Another thing I've done with mixed success is a downtime system: between adventures and out of session (we used a private Facebook page and a google drive folder) characters get 2 weeks or a month or whatever of downtime where they use craft skills or do research or seek rumors. In my last campaign, one of my players was interested in planar cosmology and demonology, so he generally used his downtime researching that. The really nice thing about that for me as a DM was that it gave me clear direction on what part of the campaign world was directly interesting to the player. It led to a lot less wasted time developing corners of my world that nobody would ever poke their nose into. Some of the other players were much less interested in using this--game time was game time, and out of game reading felt too much like homework. This was still pretty ok, though, since their disinterest had little bearing on the ability of the interested players to enjoy the game, and vice versa. YMMV

[DuctTapeKatar]

If this is supposed to be like modern governments, my best suggestion is that you have to look at it kinda like a, well, game. Most democracies nowadays have a set of rules like those of a game. For the United States (the system I am most familiar with), the Constitution serves as the base rules: you can't do this, you can't do that, and such (although, it does have a system where we can make amendments, which could be interesting to play with in a game like you propose). The three branches serve as the classes: the Legislative creates, modifies, and produces laws; Executive approves and enforces; Judicial ensures that the laws created don't contradict earlier laws, and otherwise don't break the ground rules of the Constitution.

I think that you need to establish the setting first before getting into the political nastiness. It seems that magic is a very small minority, as of Arcanic Committee's low stature (though it is implied that it is because of its narrow mindset), but it isn't established if magic is common or not. The legislation don't seem to have anyone to represent. Remember, what makes the Senate and House of Representatives an important part of the United States is that they are supposed to represent the interest of their own individual states, and in extension, the people, and you have not established the people and what they want (or what the politicians want).

The Committee system is the largest problem--you have basically set it up where the only place where any plot has to be ran by a large enough group that encompasses all of the Committees of every single house. There is no established Constitution, or general code, or even a set of Checks and Balances (which I find to be what makes it the most game-like) for which the game to follow, thus making there no need for any form of Judicial branch, which prevents any form of counter-politics. There is no definite rules that everyone needs to follow, no constitution, no Checks-and-Balances which make one house able to counter the other. And on top of that, there is barely any place for individual action: the basis for all political intrigue.

First, design a proper constitution. Even if there isn't one, there should be at least a code or unspoken rules between the states involved which would condemn those who attempt to break them.

[FallenGeek]

I unfortunately have little advice on how to run such a game, but I would certainly prepare for destruction of property to eliminate certain rivals. After all, ships sink at sea all the time - dedicated (or bribed) pirates can ensure that certain senators are removed from play before major events/votes.

[Stan]

Just like the rest of the game, it helps to start small and manageable. With your current set up, a campaign that focused on a single committee would have more than enough NPCs to keep track off. Most players aren't up to keeping track of more than 5-6 important NPCs or more than 3 groups.

The lower level of the senate could be treated like points, where players make moves and then roll and add modifiers to see how many votes they sway. For example, say there's going to be a vote, 80 are in a party on their side, 90 are in the party opposed. A roll or series of rolls would determine the how many of the 30 undecided decide to vote the party's way, without a need to give personalities to every senator.

Another thing to try is to focus on a single city-state, along the lines of Venice. The total number of politicians would be smaller and political decisions would be more likely to have a direct impact on the city. In a past game, I had a Venice-like city with a mayor, his staff members (who each had a magical staff), and a parliament. Some of the staff members got their positions on the staff automatically due to heading the army, navy, wizards, or guilds, only a few were decided by parliament. You had to pay an annual take of 10 gp to vote and 100 gp to run for office, which gave it a renaissance feel of a mix between democracy and nobility.

You could try browsing the Birthright rules for ideas. It had rules for being rulers of provinces, guilds, and temples for different types of rulers (fighter, wizard, priest, or rogue). It gave an idea of how much money a group would collect and gave a list of actions they could do in a season.

[Mechalich]

[quote]
The head of state and head of government is the consul. The consul is elected from the senate by the parliament to serve a 4-year term, coinciding with the parliamentary terms. The consul appoints senators to the 5 upper committees: commerce, diplomatic, law, Arcanic, and Theologic. The consul also appoints the chair of these committees. As a senator may not serve on more than one committee a consul is very often required to put multiple political opponents on committees. On occasion where the senate is hostile to the consul the consul may end up ceding one or more committees to their political opponents.

This seems like a rather weak executive post. The government is likely to be difficult to control and unwieldy as a result.


Committees

Having committees of different sizes seems unnecessarily confusing. I think you'd be better picking a number - probably 6 or 8 - and making all committees that size.



2) Own arable land of area greater than 20,000 square kilometres (these are measured and recorded by the powerful audit subcommittee – the land area was instituted to devolve more political power to rural regions, often occupied by other species/ethnicities who would otherwise lack a political voice. The arable condition was applied to provide an incentive for draining the swampland to improve food security)

Currently the senate holds 139 senators: 56 from merchant shipping, 35 from arable land, 25 high Priests, 14 Chancellors, 8 who have been granted the title of Marquis. The size of the house may change slightly through time as the number

20,000 square kilometers is an area the size of Israel or Solvenia. 20,000 square kilometers of arable land is an immensity - there are only 78 countries on Earth that even have 20,000 square kilometers of arable land. If there are 35 senators each holding that much land, your country has a minimum of 700,000 sq km of arable land. More realistically, the biggest landowners can't control all arable land, so say they hold 80% (still almost impossibly concentrated), and you're looking at 875,000 sq km. That puts you somewhere between Brazil (5th in the world) and Russia (4th in the world) in the arable land calculus. I'd suggest downscaling that some (unless you're trying to simulate Imperial China, in which case you're doing just fine).

Also, you have 139 senators but only 40 upper committee slots, meaning you have a huge number of Senators who are largely superfluous to the principle operations of the government. This is kind of weird, since it means you have a vast and extraneous upper level bureaucracy (again, unless you're trying to simulate Imperial China...something to think about). Also, you have 60 districts that don't have Senators, which based on your criteria means they are probably comparatively impoverished and unimportant compared to the others.



There are 200 members of parliament, each is elected from within their resident district. There is no restriction on who can vote nor who can stand for parliament by wealth however only humans and halflings may vote for members of parliament.

Your 60 districts that have no senators are likely to be low population and weak economy regions that are probably populated by minority ethnicities/species. Their representatives may be extremely vulnerable to corruption.


Are there any obvious consequences to a system like this? Am I getting too involved (I haven't done a political game before)? Would any players even care if there was a more detailed political system? Does anyone have any advice?

The immediate follow up question is 'what does district government look like?' Your plan outlines the central government for a large state with a central government that will be unable to enact new policies in a swift and decisive manner, so a great deal of power will devolve to low levels of authority. This is especially true is the technology and magic levels are sufficiently low that historically accurate communication barriers remain in place. Individual district governors are probably going to be the most powerful figures in daily life and will likely have subordinate officials who operate at the city/township level (Prefect, Magistrate, etc.) that low-level characters actually interact with.

A second natural follow-up question is 'what does the executive branch do?' You've described the legislative setup for the generation of policy, but nothing regarding its implementation. Historically many central governments were relatively weak, though they might command very powerful centralized armies and collect significant taxes, but their ministries had nothing like the influence of modern state-level administrations. However, this was not universally true and a strong central administration is certainly possible, though the presence of elected officials in the absence of modern communication technologies tends to make a strong centralized state difficult. Unelected ministers who may serve for decades can get around this limitation.

You should also consider what the principle divisions in your state happen to be based on. For example, assuming this is a multiple-species state (which seems implied), is species the central divide? Is power divided between a small number of influential power blocks jockeying for an overwhelming majority (classically this would be two massive extended families)? Or is power divided between supporters of a stronger centralized government versus supporters of stronger regional authority? Or some other setup.

[jqavins]

20,000 square kilometers is an area the size of Israel or Solvenia. 20,000 square kilometers of arable land is an immensity... I'd suggest downscaling that some.I'd suggest removing three zeros. Two, if you want that membership threshhold to be really, really big. Or keep it at 20,000, but make it acres instead of km2; that's still bigger than Manhatten.

Other than that, I'd say that you have (as Medicant said) more than is called for as background to a "regular" campaign. But you stated that you're interested in a game heavy in political intrigue; if by tht you mean the characters' involvement in politics is central, then you don't have enough here (as Mechalich pointed out.) Even at the central government level, what you've got is a constitutional structure, the way the government is officially set up, but you've got nothing about how it really operates and how politics is done. For instance, what compells the consul to appoint committee chairmen in a timely manner rather than letting the chairs sit vacant? Likewise, senatorial and palimentary appointments to the committees and subcommittes. If there are just not enough members of one's own party (or faction by another name) then why not just appoint no one?

If, appointments having been made, one finds a committe or subcommittee closely divided between factions, is it common for the blance to be shifted by assassination? I know I would not feel safe if I were a member of the opposition party on an evenly split commottee.

And so on. You've described only the civics, not the politics.

[Mendicant]

I agree with the others who've noted that you've so far described the civics but not the politics at this point. That said, start small and work outward. Pick a single contested piece of the government, figure out who wants it, what you get from having it, and how you'd go about shifting the balance in order to get it. This doesn't need to be world-shaking stuff: the fortunes of a particular noble family, merchant house, or town that the players are tied to is probably sufficient as plot fuel at the very beginning.