Can anybody give a reasonable explanation?

[AdAstra]

Well, since we have plenty of abstract discussion, why not develop some slightly less abstract models on what a mageocracy might actually look like. Because "having a mage as a king" really isn't enough. Magical power has to actually be considered the most relevant factor in terms of giving people institutional power, or else it's just a government with mages in it.

Here I've created some spitballed examples very loosely based on some real-world historical governments.

Magic Sparta- Magic is considered the only worthwhile skill. Children or even infants are tested for magical ability. Those unable to express magical powers, or those found wanting (assuming magic is particularly common) are either killed or enslaved. Those with magic are trained brutally their entire lives to master it, and the best are entrusted with leading their compatriots in matters of state and war. A large nonmagical slave class exists to provide food production (undead usually are depicted as not being all that good for their surroundings), certain manufactured goods, fodder in low-intensity conflicts, and corpses for use as undead servants. Much time and effort is spent cracking down on revolts and unrest, usually through terror and police state tactics. Due to such a need for combat and info-gathering magic, the mages of this nation will likely sell their services abroad as mercenaries and spies. This is kinda like Thay, and moreover, is a place very few people would want to live. A prime government for some aspiring heroes to form a noble resistance against, or as a terrifying past threat who's echoes still haunt the land.

Magic Imperial China- Somewhat more like a conventional kingdom. Magic is a highly respected skill, and there are regular examinations in which young people from across the country are tested for their magical abilities. Those with sufficient potential are brought to training centers to be taught the magical arts they are judged most suited for, then given positions of power in various levels of administration. Advancement in the magical bureaucracy is mostly through selection by one's superiors, meaning that in practice, one's position is going to be largely determined by their networking skills and ability to navigate an unwieldy system. This government could probably manage things pretty stably, but there may be little significant advancement, and significant changes may leave it reeling. May or may not have a leadership dynasty of some kind, but a significant amount of the power will be in the bureaucracy, waxing and waning with time. Significant tension may arise between the two, especially since the dynasty is far from guaranteed to have magical ability at all. Nonmagical arts, history, and philosophy liable to be suppressed. This society will likely produce many powerful but disaffected mages, who were screwed over or uninterested by the bureaucracy. Rebels, villains, exiles, etc. A decent background for an NPC or PC. Possibly one of the only Mageocracies I can think of that might focus on magic other than that used for war or manipulation.

Magic Stereotypical Tribal Society- Various scattered enclaves of people, led by chieftains who earn their positions through demonstrations of magical prowess, often through combat. Magic is informally trained but very respected by the community, and is likely critical to their survival. While it's likely very possible for someone to win leadership through nonviolent means or magical cleverness, it's usually easier to just disintegrate your opponent, so...

[King of Nowhere]

the unseen university model: wizards are powerful and can do what they want. society then provides them with all the means they need, mostly as a bribe to keep them out of their hair. which works well enough, because wizards don't have much interest in the actual day-to-day workings of the city. gradually they become their own enclave.
this is actually a good example of how a magocracy could collapse without violent revolution, simply because the wizards become gradually more isolationistic.

the aes sedai model: wizards are all gathered in a tower that serves as a center of the world political network. they meddle in the politics of everyone else, using manipulation and blackmail mostly. over the course of centuries, they become gradually more isolated and mistrusted, until most lands barely tolerate them, at best. still, nobody can challenge their power, because they have magic.
the moment there is an actual crysis, it becomes obvious that the vast majority of them are whoefully unprepared to deal with anything out of the ordinary.
and the moment they are faced with a country that trains war wizards, it becomes obvious they spent too much time politicking and too little time actually practicing their magic.

[Ignimortis]

I'm quite surprised at people saying "why aren't most scientists/engineers/etc. politicians, presidents and rulers?". The answer is simple. It's not about them not feeling up to it - everyone at some point had a "hey, if I were in charge, I'd do this..." thought, and might've followed on it, if not for one factor. They don't have any world-bending, almost instantly summonable power to circumvent normal processes, and use the same rules as everyone else, so it would take a gigantic amount of work and luck to get to a point where they could affect the situation.

Wizards and other casters usually don't suffer from these limitations - they're mortals plus, they're someone who can very well have everything a mortal ruler has, plus supernatural powers. As such, it seems very plausible that a sufficiently irked/interested D&D wizard can upend society, unless the society has someone of similar power oppose them.

[Vahnavoi]

Something like Vahnavoi's point is the best answer. Just because mageocracy dominates in the long run doesn't mean it dominates right now. In the real world, it took thousands of years to go from the emergence of civilization to empires that could even claim to be global in scope. D&D has various trends pushing that number up or down, but seeing as most campaigns last a single-digit number of in-game years (with that digit often being 1), it's entirely plausible to say "this campaign happens before mages take over the world", just as if you want to write a story without guns you can set it before the invention of gunpowder.

Exactly. The default D&D setting the rules introduce the player characters to makes some very specific assumptions, some of which are cast into doubt or cannot be derived from grassroots elements of the system. For example, the demographics tables given in DMG don't really follow from character generation rules, they're largely arbitrary.

Additionally, tables ignore certain rules or their implications for player convenience and they are poorly factored into world building. My favorite example is starting age rules.

For example:

The starting age for barbarians is "young adulthood" plus 1d4 years, plus 1d6 years for fighters and 2d6 years for wizards.

So if 100 people start training as barbarians, 100 people start training as fighter and 100 people start training training as wizards on a setting's year zero:

After 1 year, you will have (expected values) 25 combat-ready 1st level barbarians, 16 fighters and... 0 wizards.

After 2 years, you will have another 25 barbarians, 16 fighters and just 3 wizards. And now you have to ask the question: what did the previous age cohort of barbarians and fighters do for an entire year? We know that extrapolating from grassroots up, it's theoretically possible to get to epic levels in matter of months. Now, realistically, everyone attempting that would die, but even accounting that, some of those 1st year barbarians and fighters would survive and be at least 2nd level or higher.

So in a world where everyone has to do by-the-rules work to become who they are, wizards don't come into being lording ultimate cosmic power over peons. They come to being as greenhorn apprentices, armed with cantrips and 1st level spells against non-wizard warriors who have years of experience on them and outnumber them.

It's fair to ask: what happens if the faster "graduating" classes decide that they don't want slower graduating Tier 1 classes to exist? Can 3 1st level wizards triumph over 25 1st level barbarians lead by 2nd level+ barbarian chieftain? Can 0th level wizard trainees (a mix of 1st level commoners, adepts and 1 RHD humanoids, most likely)?

Just because a high level caster could dominate a low-level non-magical society, it doesn't follow this scenario gets to happen. Because low-level casters can be beat up by higher-level martials like the nerds they are.

[Tanarii]

That's not really the right analogy. It's not like historically the king was king because we was the best at ruling. He was king because he was descended from the last guy who assembled a large enough army that "look at all these dudes who will stab you if you don't put me in charge" seemed like a compelling reason to have him be in charge. In a world where that's the paradigm for allocating political power, the question "why isn't the guy who can summon an army of demons in charge" becomes a lot less obvious.

Summoning an army of demons either requires one specific edition of D&D and splatbook tricks, or DM fiat, or being an NPC.

Other than that, I reiterate my analogy. The skills and talents it takes to become a Wizard and the personal power that results only trivially overlap those that make rulers. Including ruling by force of army.

Magic Sparta- Magic is considered the only worthwhile skill. Children or even infants are tested for magical ability. Those unable to express magical powers, or those found wanting (assuming magic is particularly common) are either killed or enslaved. Those with magic are trained brutally their entire lives to master it, and the best are entrusted with leading their compatriots in matters of state and war. A large nonmagical slave class exists to provide food production (undead usually are depicted as not being all that good for their surroundings), certain manufactured goods, fodder in low-intensity conflicts, and corpses for use as undead servants. Much time and effort is spent cracking down on revolts and unrest, usually through terror and police state tactics. Due to such a need for combat and info-gathering magic, the mages of this nation will likely sell their services abroad as mercenaries and spies. This is kinda like Thay, and moreover, is a place very few people would want to live. A prime government for some aspiring heroes to form a noble resistance against, or as a terrifying past threat who's echoes still haunt the land

Oh I really like that one. Even better would be if the active duty warriors are 5e EKs, who multiclassing into Wizard when they become elder statesmen. (Or some NPC equivalents.)

Wizards and other casters usually don't suffer from these limitations - they're mortals plus, they're someone who can very well have everything a mortal ruler has, plus supernatural powers. As such, it seems very plausible that a sufficiently irked/interested D&D wizard can upend society, unless the society has someone of similar power oppose them.

- the personal power of wizards doesn't translate into large scale power very well. They're incredibly vulnerable individuals, glass cannons. Except, yknow, in 3e specifically.
- there always are those of similar power to oppose them. Usually it's the PCs. But most D&D worlds assume there are NPC adventurers, so there's always someone.

[Zarrgon]

They don't have any world-bending, almost instantly summonable power to circumvent normal processes, and use the same rules as everyone else, so it would take a gigantic amount of work and luck to get to a point where they could affect the situation.

Well once you drop the Silly Game Rules and the Gentleman's Fairness and the Soft Safe Reality Rules and the Low Magic Rules(except for that concurring spellcaster, right?)and the Everyone is a Nobody World and even more so the PC Privilege Rules: The alternate fictional reality would be a lot like what we know. So it WOULD take a spellcaster a gigantic amount of work and luck to take over.


The only way it looks easy to have a spellcaster rule is to have the reality operate under all the Kids Glove Settings: Silly Game Rules, Gentleman's Fairness, Soft Safe Reality Rules, Low Magic Rules, Everyone is a Nobody World and the PC Privilege Rules. All the above alter a reality into easy mode, take them all away and you have a Reality of Hard Knocks.

[Cluedrew]

Again, there's a difference between "magocracy" and "monarchy where the king is a wizard".

I'm not an expert but that seems pretty good. A lot of people have mentioned this difference but no one has really gone into detail. Or maybe someone did in the initial rush and I forgot.

(Also this should probably be in the D&D forums, seeing how this is very much not a generic RPG thing).

Which actually makes me think, what elements of a magic system - and larger setting - would lead to a magocracy?

In broad strokes you would first need "magic-user" to somehow be able to form a caste, which is mostly having the right population, some tiers within that group would help. The only other thing you need for it to happen on occasion is that being a magic user leaves you with enough time to participate in politics.

To be common there has to be a strong reason to have casters in positions of power. Not just working for the government either, actually leading it. And as I do not consider mass mind control to be a political system just being sufficiently powerful is not enough. Wizard-tyrants will show up on occasion but their conquests will free themselves on their (likely sudden) deaths, via either a rival or a more noble caster (or general hero). Less egotistical wizards will likely be quite a force for the regimes they support (and also hold some sway over it) but rarely would lead it better than any given existing member.

Really I think magic might be a critical part of a nation in a fantasy setting, but maybe not its leadership. The best leader-casters would be the ones that are naturally wise and personable, but even then its not really the magic that is doing it. Even if we assume that enough casters want to rule for their own ego and there is no one else can stop them, that doesn't seem like it will consistently lead to governments of almost as powerful casters.

[Zarrgon]

I'm not an expert but that seems pretty good. A lot of people have mentioned this difference but no one has really gone into detail. Or maybe someone did in the initial rush and I forgot.

You might note that Magocracys are rare in fiction for a simple reason: you'd need a LOT of spellcasters for it to exist. And for a lot of writers that makes for a huge problem as that is a lot of magic around in the world. You can do it, but for the most part it's a head ache that most writers just avoid by making magic rare.

A true magocracy would be world changing, so much to make a world alien. And again while some fiction does this, most fiction sticks to the world that is "just like Earth, but with a twist or two".

Just think of a magocracy, with just Divination: Think Minority Report, but worse.

Which actually makes me think, what elements of a magic system - and larger setting - would lead to a magocracy?

Freedom.

The best example of a magocracy would be where the spellcasters take over specifically to give themselves and others freedom.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Exactly. The default D&D setting the rules introduce the player characters to makes some very specific assumptions, some of which are cast into doubt or cannot be derived from grassroots elements of the system. For example, the demographics tables given in DMG don't really follow from character generation rules, they're largely arbitrary.
[...]
Just because a high level caster could dominate a low-level non-magical society, it doesn't follow this scenario gets to happen. Because low-level casters can be beat up by higher-level martials like the nerds they are.

Well once you drop the Silly Game Rules and the Gentleman's Fairness and the Soft Safe Reality Rules and the Low Magic Rules(except for that concurring spellcaster, right?)and the Everyone is a Nobody World and even more so the PC Privilege Rules: The alternate fictional reality would be a lot like what we know. So it WOULD take a spellcaster a gigantic amount of work and luck to take over.

The only way it looks easy to have a spellcaster rule is to have the reality operate under all the Kids Glove Settings: Silly Game Rules, Gentleman's Fairness, Soft Safe Reality Rules, Low Magic Rules, Everyone is a Nobody World and the PC Privilege Rules. All the above alter a reality into easy mode, take them all away and you have a Reality of Hard Knocks.

If you want to assume that the default setting is operating under "Soft Safe Reality Rules" and/or arbitrary PC favoritism and you want to see what society would "logically" look like without those, well...society as we know it wouldn't exist at all, because the only sapient beings on the entire Prime Material Plane would be aboleths in the sea and dragons on land.

The former were the first Prime creatures to exist and come with innate psionics, mind control, perfect racial memory back to their race's creation, and unique forms of racial magic; the latter arose at or aruond the same time and come with innate magic, breath weapons, incredible tankiness, and some of the highest CRs in the book; and neither aboleths nor evil dragons would "logically" let a couple of hairless apes exist for more than a few days after their patron deities plopped them on a given Prime world.


The rules cover the "modern day" of the various D&D settings, so you can't really talk about what things would "really look like" in the setting's ancient past or when everyone was 1st level or whatever. The past could very well be treated as a different setting (like how the Dragon Magazine "planet of humanoids and dinosaurs living together" setting has a bunch of tweaked rules and race/class changes) or operate under different rules (like how editions changes are explicit in-world events in the Forgotten Realms), so any assertion you make about how things would "really be" is as valid as any other.

Barbarians, Rogues, and Sorcerers have the same starting ages, and maybe those three classes were the only ones around at "the beginning" and the sorcerers' supremacy let them stick around long enough for wizardry to be invented. Or maybe every class was around then, and the local God of Magic made it clear that offing all the apprentice wizards would be answered with divine smiting. Or maybe early humanoid settlements only survived because a Good-aligned dragon took each one under its literal and metaphorical wings, and wizards were the dragons' valued servants to whom the dragons taught magic.

Maybe there's no need for DM Gentlemen's Agreements to keep people alive because all the monsters that would otherwise eat all the low-level humanoids are busy fighting each other, the same way high-level casters tend to oppose each other and ignore any low-level future threats. Maybe any gentlemen's agreements are in-world ones, where LE Lich-Kings and CG King-Priests agree not to try to dethrone each other because every few decades there's another demonic invasion or whatever and society needs to be stable and full of well-trained casters to deal with them. Maybe there's no gentlemen's agreements at all, in- or out-of-game, and the world is a barren wasteland in which humans are barely clinging to survival Dark Sun-style because neither monsters nor evil wizards are pulling their punches.

Any attempt to go hard RAW in one area and handwave things in another is pointless, because the possibility space of "take rules A1, A2, A3, ... as-is and extrapolate B1, B2, B3, ..." is infinitely large and no one's going to make the same assumptions; for every "low-level martial jocks easily beat up low-level caster nerds" there's an equal and opposite "low-level casters have sleep and daggers and low-level martials have low Will saves," and so forth.

To be common there has to be a strong reason to have casters in positions of power. Not just working for the government either, actually leading it. And as I do not consider mass mind control to be a political system just being sufficiently powerful is not enough. Wizard-tyrants will show up on occasion but their conquests will free themselves on their (likely sudden) deaths, via either a rival or a more noble caster (or general hero). Less egotistical wizards will likely be quite a force for the regimes they support (and also hold some sway over it) but rarely would lead it better than any given existing member.

Really I think magic might be a critical part of a nation in a fantasy setting, but maybe not its leadership. The best leader-casters would be the ones that are naturally wise and personable, but even then its not really the magic that is doing it. Even if we assume that enough casters want to rule for their own ego and there is no one else can stop them, that doesn't seem like it will consistently lead to governments of almost as powerful casters.

That assumption holds for magocracies, but not theocracies. In a theocracy:

• Priests come with a built-in structure that wizards don't: Wizards might all be loners sequestered in their wizard towers eschewing the formation of wizard guilds, but even small-fry Chaotic Evil gods tend to have their followers gather in cults instead of sending lone mad priests to do their thing, and where non-wizard arcanists have no reason to take on apprentices because sorcery can't really be passed on the way wizardry can, clerics are encouraged to proselytize to gain their god more followers.
• Priests have an excellent reason to be in positions of power: If you're a priest of a god of Justice or Community or Tyranny or Cities or the like, not only are you probably going to study government and politics as part of your religious devotions, but "I'm a high priest of the God of Governing Places Well" is likely to get you accepted by the public a lot better than "I'm a wizard and I have ideas!" would.
• In a D&D-like system, divine magic is correlated with wisdom and force of personality such that a powerful cleric (or favored soul, or shugenja, or...) is necessarily going to be much more insightful and personable than the average non-caster politician; granted, "personable" could mean either "feared and beloved Priest-Tyrant" or "good and noble King-Priest" so the populace might not like their priestly ruler, but it's more than can be said for powerful wizards either way.

So in any magic system where magocracies are at all possible, theocracies are actively encouraged, I'd say. And once you have a bunch of theocracies around, well, magocracies might very well spring up in reaction to that: a group of people who aren't faithful enough to be a priest of an existing theocracy or don't like the religions in charge or whatever, but who still want both magic and political power, might be encouraged to go the magocracy route, giving rise to a bunch of magocracies even if they wouldn't have arisen naturally on their own.

[NigelWalmsley]

It's fair to ask: what happens if the faster "graduating" classes decide that they don't want slower graduating Tier 1 classes to exist?

Presumably they eventually get conquered by someone who didn't make that mistake. Or by monsters that get magic just for waking up. Fundamentally, D&D is a game that has a lot of magic in it. If you're looking for a setting that doesn't have very much magic, either constrain it explicitly (e.g. E6) or play a different game.

Summoning an army of demons either requires one specific edition of D&D and splatbook tricks, or DM fiat, or being an NPC.

Well, seeing as the vast majority of world leaders are NPCs, needing to be one doesn't seem like much of a constraint. And most other editions have comparable tricks (though not always in the hands of Wizards specifically).

Other than that, I reiterate my analogy. The skills and talents it takes to become a Wizard and the personal power that results only trivially overlap those that make rulers. Including ruling by force of army.

And your analogy continues to be wrong. Magical power overlaps pretty perfectly with force of arms, because D&D is fundamentally a game about applying force of arms to get what you want. The idea that a guy whose literal job is killing people would be bad at killing people betrays a fundamental lack of logic.

there always are those of similar power to oppose them.

Sure. They're called "other claimants to the throne", and when they win they become king. Which doesn't really change the outcome. You seem to be assuming some notion of political legitimacy or something, where people would oppose your declaration that you were king because your army is tougher and stronger than the other armies on moral grounds, but that simply does not exist in medieval societies.

The former were the first Prime creatures to exist and come with innate psionics, mind control, perfect racial memory back to their race's creation, and unique forms of racial magic; the latter arose at or aruond the same time and come with innate magic, breath weapons, incredible tankiness, and some of the highest CRs in the book; and neither aboleths nor evil dragons would "logically" let a couple of hairless apes exist for more than a few days after their patron deities plopped them on a given Prime world.

I don't think that's true. Humanoids are useful. They have opposable thumbs, there are a lot of them, they don't have the giant egos of Dragons or Aboleths, and they're (generally) not nearly so dangerous as others of your species. Aboleths in particular are likely to have the kind of culture that makes Primes or Prador look cuddly, and will be badly in need of expendable go-betweens for whatever political dealings they want to do.

So you'd probably have plenty of humanoids, they'd just be living as the slaves or servants of the horrifyingly powerful monsters that dominate the world. You'd get something like Dragons-timeline Tarkir (or the prehistory of the Elder Empire books), but with a wider variety of creatures at the top of the foodchain. And with human populations regularly getting culled so that no one could level up enough to be threatening to the rulers. Which is reasonably compelling as a campaign

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I don't think that's true. Humanoids are useful. They have opposable thumbs, there are a lot of them, they don't have the giant egos of Dragons or Aboleths, and they're (generally) not nearly so dangerous as others of your species. Aboleths in particular are likely to have the kind of culture that makes Primes or Prador look cuddly, and will be badly in need of expendable go-betweens for whatever political dealings they want to do.

So you'd probably have plenty of humanoids, they'd just be living as the slaves or servants of the horrifyingly powerful monsters that dominate the world. You'd get something like Dragons-timeline Tarkir (or the prehistory of the Elder Empire books), but with a wider variety of creatures at the top of the foodchain. And with human populations regularly getting culled so that no one could level up enough to be threatening to the rulers. Which is reasonably compelling as a campaign

Perhaps. On the other hand, aboleths tend not to care about the surface world and their Enslave ability has a short range and allows ongoing attempts to break out of it, and evil dragons tend to be the "breathe fire first ask questions never" type and aren't guaranteed to have mind-control magic at their disposal given the unpredictability of sorcerer casting, so it's entirely possible that neither one would to let a bunch of humanoids stick around--let alone enough of them to form any sort of society--in the scenario proposed.

The scenario you posit would definitely and obviously make for a much more interesting campaign and fit the default-setting-as-actually-depicted much better, of course, but the point I was making was that the kinds of "creatures/people who got stronger earlier would obviously wipe out later creatures/people who might potentially surpass them later" and "casters only exist at the DM's sufferance because monsters would wipe them out otherwise" hypotheses being proposed would lead to a ridiculously reductive setting where basically everything dies off. You have to accept at least some level of ambiguity/rules difference/handwaving/etc. regarding the ancient history of a given setting for humanoids to exist at all in such a monster-filled world, and at that point quibbling about whether the first wizard existed before the first barbarian or the first dragon is pointless.

[AdAstra]

If you want to assume that the default setting is operating under "Soft Safe Reality Rules" and/or arbitrary PC favoritism and you want to see what society would "logically" look like without those, well...society as we know it wouldn't exist at all, because the only sapient beings on the entire Prime Material Plane would be aboleths in the sea and dragons on land.

The former were the first Prime creatures to exist and come with innate psionics, mind control, perfect racial memory back to their race's creation, and unique forms of racial magic; the latter arose at or aruond the same time and come with innate magic, breath weapons, incredible tankiness, and some of the highest CRs in the book; and neither aboleths nor evil dragons would "logically" let a couple of hairless apes exist for more than a few days after their patron deities plopped them on a given Prime world.


The rules cover the "modern day" of the various D&D settings, so you can't really talk about what things would "really look like" in the setting's ancient past or when everyone was 1st level or whatever. The past could very well be treated as a different setting (like how the Dragon Magazine "planet of humanoids and dinosaurs living together" setting has a bunch of tweaked rules and race/class changes) or operate under different rules (like how editions changes are explicit in-world events in the Forgotten Realms), so any assertion you make about how things would "really be" is as valid as any other.

Barbarians, Rogues, and Sorcerers have the same starting ages, and maybe those three classes were the only ones around at "the beginning" and the sorcerers' supremacy let them stick around long enough for wizardry to be invented. Or maybe every class was around then, and the local God of Magic made it clear that offing all the apprentice wizards would be answered with divine smiting. Or maybe early humanoid settlements only survived because a Good-aligned dragon took each one under its literal and metaphorical wings, and wizards were the dragons' valued servants to whom the dragons taught magic.

Maybe there's no need for DM Gentlemen's Agreements to keep people alive because all the monsters that would otherwise eat all the low-level humanoids are busy fighting each other, the same way high-level casters tend to oppose each other and ignore any low-level future threats. Maybe any gentlemen's agreements are in-world ones, where LE Lich-Kings and CG King-Priests agree not to try to dethrone each other because every few decades there's another demonic invasion or whatever and society needs to be stable and full of well-trained casters to deal with them. Maybe there's no gentlemen's agreements at all, in- or out-of-game, and the world is a barren wasteland in which humans are barely clinging to survival Dark Sun-style because neither monsters nor evil wizards are pulling their punches.

Any attempt to go hard RAW in one area and handwave things in another is pointless, because the possibility space of "take rules A1, A2, A3, ... as-is and extrapolate B1, B2, B3, ..." is infinitely large and no one's going to make the same assumptions; for every "low-level martial jocks easily beat up low-level caster nerds" there's an equal and opposite "low-level casters have sleep and daggers and low-level martials have low Will saves," and so forth.



That assumption holds for magocracies, but not theocracies. In a theocracy:

• Priests come with a built-in structure that wizards don't: Wizards might all be loners sequestered in their wizard towers eschewing the formation of wizard guilds, but even small-fry Chaotic Evil gods tend to have their followers gather in cults instead of sending lone mad priests to do their thing, and where non-wizard arcanists have no reason to take on apprentices because sorcery can't really be passed on the way wizardry can, clerics are encouraged to proselytize to gain their god more followers.
• Priests have an excellent reason to be in positions of power: If you're a priest of a god of Justice or Community or Tyranny or Cities or the like, not only are you probably going to study government and politics as part of your religious devotions, but "I'm a high priest of the God of Governing Places Well" is likely to get you accepted by the public a lot better than "I'm a wizard and I have ideas!" would.
• In a D&D-like system, divine magic is correlated with wisdom and force of personality such that a powerful cleric (or favored soul, or shugenja, or...) is necessarily going to be much more insightful and personable than the average non-caster politician; granted, "personable" could mean either "feared and beloved Priest-Tyrant" or "good and noble King-Priest" so the populace might not like their priestly ruler, but it's more than can be said for powerful wizards either way.

So in any magic system where magocracies are at all possible, theocracies are actively encouraged, I'd say. And once you have a bunch of theocracies around, well, magocracies might very well spring up in reaction to that: a group of people who aren't faithful enough to be a priest of an existing theocracy or don't like the religions in charge or whatever, but who still want both magic and political power, might be encouraged to go the magocracy route, giving rise to a bunch of magocracies even if they wouldn't have arisen naturally on their own.

Big issue for any theocracies is the fact that most Clerics are, in some form, actively beholden to their gods. And most Good and Neutral gods in DnD settings are fairly protective of the status quo. Theocracies are rarely all that accommodating to alternative faiths, and in a world where those alternative faiths have high level casters of their own, any attempt by a god, pantheon, or servants of such to seize control is going to be opposed by basically everyone else. The lack of theocracies is most likely an informal (or possibly formally declared) agreement between churches to avoid excessively destructive conflict. Servants of the gods in DnD have massive amounts of soft and hard power already, making it official just paints a giant target on your head.

[Nifft]

Big issue for any theocracies is the fact that most Clerics are, in some form, actively beholden to their gods. And most Good and Neutral gods in DnD settings are fairly protective of the status quo. Theocracies are rarely all that accommodating to alternative faiths, and in a world where those alternative faiths have high level casters of their own, any attempt by a god, pantheon, or servants of such to seize control is going to be opposed by basically everyone else. The lack of theocracies is most likely an informal (or possibly formally declared) agreement between churches to avoid excessively destructive conflict. Servants of the gods in DnD have massive amounts of soft and hard power already, making it official just paints a giant target on your head.

Greyhawk had some status-quo gods who were evil, and some innovative good gods. Hextor (LE) was acceptable to the Great Kingdom because he supported the status quo; Heironeous (LG) in contrast had an order of Paladins which used revolvers (innovative technology) to dispense frontier justice.

Greyhawk's best-known theocracy (the Pale) was intolerant of other faiths, but would happily accept people from other racial groups if they converted (e.g. the "Faithful Flan").

----------

Eberron had pantheonic worship as the baseline (Sovereign Host). Their best-known theocracy (Thrane) isn't particularly intolerant, and the few canon NPCs which I remember seem to evangelize by doing good while being public about their own faith rather than by oppressing other faiths. (They do oppress and smite Shifters, who are the fur-zerker descendants of lycanthropes, but that's not a religious intolerance.)

Thrane's contemporary art is apparently a form of cubism, so their aesthetics aren't particularly static either.

[Zarrgon]

If you want to assume that the default setting is operating under "Soft Safe Reality Rules" and/or arbitrary PC favoritism and you want to see what society would "logically" look like without those, well...society as we know it wouldn't exist at all, because the only sapient beings on the entire Prime Material Plane would be aboleths in the sea and dragons on land.

Well, your only giving one possible reality. In an infinite multiverse anything can and will happen.

Though I'm talking more about a world without all the Safe and Fair reality rules used by whinny players. Just think of anything a player would whine about and demand not be part of the game.

A great example is when a PC would go to sleep and the DM would just say "ok, your character is dead. Roll up a new character". A player would whine and scream endlessly and demand that any and all attacks on the character must be known to them and such attacks can only happen when the player and character are ready...and, of course, the attack must follow the silly challenge encounter rules and so on.

[AdAstra]

Greyhawk had some status-quo gods who were evil, and some innovative good gods. Hextor (LE) was acceptable to the Great Kingdom because he supported the status quo; Heironeous (LG) in contrast had an order of Paladins which used revolvers (innovative technology) to dispense frontier justice.

Greyhawk's best-known theocracy (the Pale) was intolerant of other faiths, but would happily accept people from other racial groups if they converted (e.g. the "Faithful Flan").

----------

Eberron had pantheonic worship as the baseline (Sovereign Host). Their best-known theocracy (Thrane) isn't particularly intolerant, and the few canon NPCs which I remember seem to evangelize by doing good while being public about their own faith rather than by oppressing other faiths. (They do oppress and smite Shifters, who are the fur-zerker descendants of lycanthropes, but that's not a religious intolerance.)

Thrane's contemporary art is apparently a form of cubism, so their aesthetics aren't particularly static either.

Yeah I think I misspoke when I mentioned the status quo, please don't focus on that part. The point is that one god trying to form a straight up government, and thus implicitly taking away power/authority from other gods, is not going to go over well with those other gods. It's one thing to run around spreading the good word or even fighting with servants of other gods, it's another to try to acquire even more institutional power than a church normally has in this world.

As an example, let's say we've got two gods, Gork and Mork, and Generic Kingdom. Normally, the Generic Kingdom is led by a king, but that king is heavily dependent on the clerics of the two gods, and thus the churches of Gork and Mork have a lot of pull. But let's say that the church of Gork decides that they could rule better and depose the king with their Gorkly magics. That puts the church of Mork into an intensely vulnerable position. Even if the church of Gork is tolerant and allows the Morkians to continue doing their thing, now the government has all the clerical ability it needs. This means that the church of Mork has basically no pull in the Generic Kingdom anymore, no power other than their magical prowess. And what's to say the Gorkians stay tolerant? So in this scenario, the likely response from the Morkians is trying to stop the Gorkians, perhaps violently. And the Gorkians would be well aware of this. They'd be risking war for relatively minimal gain.

Now imagine that instead of two gods, it's 20. 20 individual churches all with their own clerics, goals, alliances, ideals, etc. Any church or alliance of churches taking control of the government is a huge threat to the power of all the others, and could easily piss off other groups entirely. This is usually how internecine wars start. Most well-entrenched political powers are going to be loathe to start anything, and especially unlikely to let anyone else start anything.

[KineticDiplomat]

And of course we do seem to arrive at the answer anyone really does when considering D&D world building:

It’s in no way actually consistent with even its most basic premises, because it explicitly exists to allow players to kill-level-repeat in a vaguely medieval/renaissance setting with magic (generic) or some off the wall settings (planescape?), and that is its sole purpose. In short, the writer’s may not suck at politics/economics/demographics/etc. but they sure don’t care about them because that’s not the game.

Rule of Cool and Aren’t You The Most Awesome is the game, and not surprisingly those don’t produce anything like a consistent setting. (They’re also one of the reasons why D&D is mostly just a bad game that somehow retains popularity due to crowding out a market thanks to being the first mover, but that’s another topic for another time)

So what are the baseline assumptions we’re working from here, given the writers are not incentivized to actually care to provide any?

[King of Nowhere]

And of course we do seem to arrive at the answer anyone really does when considering D&D world building:

It’s in no way actually consistent with even its most basic premises, because it explicitly exists to allow players to kill-level-repeat in a vaguely medieval/renaissance setting with magic (generic) or some off the wall settings (planescape?), and that is its sole purpose. In short, the writer’s may not suck at politics/economics/demographics/etc. but they sure don’t care about them because that’s not the game.

that's... wrong. so wrong.

sure, some people play like that. some dm worldbuild like that.
most people i know cares about worldbuilding consistency. a well-considered campaign world will have satisfying answers to the obvious questions.

and the fact that so many people are around here debating fantasy politics proves it.

and it's also the reason d&d is not a bad game, and it's not even a game, but it's rather a framework to create your own games. one of the reasons it's still popular is that it can be modded so much. at least, i'd never cared to learn different systems because if i want to adapt to a different style or setting i find it more convenient to just use some houserules and homebrew over the same basic d20 framework

Also, i haven't seen the OP again in this thread. i wonder where he went

[Willie the Duck]

Also, i haven't seen the OP again in this thread. i wonder where he went

They haven't posted elsewhere, so let's assume that life got in the way.

[KineticDiplomat]

The fact that people can world build hardly means the writers did, or that the writers provided those people with an internally consistent system to do it.

As for fantasy politics:

1) That you can debate it is not terribly relevant to D&D being good. I’m sure we could, the internet being what it is, argue the lines of succession for the Gumdrop Kingdom or the relative political merits of Disney princesses.

2) You might notice this particular fantasy politics debate started with “hey, I think D&D made a glaring internal consistency error in world building”. Which we’ve more or less all agreed is reasonable by this point, and are now at the point where we’re explaining the unique circumstances why in this particular case there is an exception and not a mageocracy. So using this debate as proof they really did try for an internally consistent world is a bit contradictory.

Now, this is probably because he writers just decided they didn’t care. They needed things for players to kill, they needed a kill-reward-repeat cycle, and they need a rule of cool place to do it in. It does make actually settling on “how things would be based on logic and what we know” a bit difficult though, on account of the writers basically said “no, that’s not how our game works. The world infinitely compensates to provide a series of level appropriate challenges, not because of an internal logic, but because that’s what we want players to deal with”.

Which brings us to “well it’s not a game, it’s a game engine for ANY setting, so it’s excellent.”

Only, it’s only even tolerable at its baseline high magic RAW method. It doesn’t handle low fantasy well, because the system is magic dominant. It doesn’t handle modern well, because ranged combat becomes a series of slugfest gunfights with no bearing on reality. It doesn’t handle melee well. It doesn’t handle human scale conflict well, or social systems, or diplomacy, or non violent solutions.

It handles one thing, and that’s High Magic power fantasy. Which is why it’s worlds aren’t ruled by world building, they’re rules by “what would look awesome and provide players both the feel of being hyper-cool-magic-users while providing a spiraling upward series of challenges”

[Zarrgon]

So what are the baseline assumptions weÂ’re working from here, given the writers are not incentivized to actually care to provide any?

Well, youd need to get rid of all the Kids Glove Settings: Silly Game Rules, Gentleman's Fairness, Soft Safe Reality Rules, Low Magic Rules, Everyone is a Nobody World and the PC Privilege Rules. All the above alter a reality into easy mode, take them all away and you have a Reality of Hard Knocks. That would at least be a baseline.

that's... wrong. so wrong.

sure, some people play like that. some dm worldbuild like that.
most people i know cares about worldbuilding consistency. a well-considered campaign world will have satisfying answers to the obvious questions.

and the fact that so many people are around here debating fantasy politics proves it.

It is so right though. And the game rules are a big huge part of the problem.

Silly Game Rules, as in all the Game Rules. They have all got to go away. The baseline must be a reality where things function and make sense. Game rules are meant for a game, and for just about all RPGs that is a mostly combat adventure game. You can't take those Game Rules as Reality Rules. Even worse, most modern games have very player friendly rules, rules for any reality will never be like that.

Gentleman's Fairness This is simple enough: Games are Fair, Life is not Fair. So any Reality must be unfair.

Soft Safe Reality Rules This covers a lot. It's basically the soft reality of fiction vs the hard reality rules of a real world simulation. Basically, all the bad and negative stuff that is part of reality but gets glossed over or edited out of game worlds.

Low Magic Rules A staple of many types of fiction and a great many games. A world with even a little magic can become a problem, so many writers and DMs just do the obvious and make the world Low Magic.

Everyone is a Nobody World Another staple of many types of fiction and a great many games. A world with even a couple somebodies can become a problem, so many writers and DMs just do the obvious and make the world full of nobodies.

PC Privilege Rules THIS is the biggest one. Most often when someone talks about a Game World Setting, they are doing it from the High Seat of PC Privilege Rules. All the social things and game rules that make PCs "special" and "stars" and "beyond normal characters".

[King of Nowhere]

The fact that people can world build hardly means the writers did, or that the writers provided those people with an internally consistent system to do it.

As for fantasy politics:

1) That you can debate it is not terribly relevant to D&D being good. I’m sure we could, the internet being what it is, argue the lines of succession for the Gumdrop Kingdom or the relative political merits of Disney princesses.

2) You might notice this particular fantasy politics debate started with “hey, I think D&D made a glaring internal consistency error in world building”. Which we’ve more or less all agreed is reasonable by this point, and are now at the point where we’re explaining the unique circumstances why in this particular case there is an exception and not a mageocracy. So using this debate as proof they really did try for an internally consistent world is a bit contradictory.

Now, this is probably because he writers just decided they didn’t care. They needed things for players to kill, they needed a kill-reward-repeat cycle, and they need a rule of cool place to do it in. It does make actually settling on “how things would be based on logic and what we know” a bit difficult though, on account of the writers basically said “no, that’s not how our game works. The world infinitely compensates to provide a series of level appropriate challenges, not because of an internal logic, but because that’s what we want players to deal with”.

Which brings us to “well it’s not a game, it’s a game engine for ANY setting, so it’s excellent.”

Only, it’s only even tolerable at its baseline high magic RAW method. It doesn’t handle low fantasy well, because the system is magic dominant. It doesn’t handle modern well, because ranged combat becomes a series of slugfest gunfights with no bearing on reality. It doesn’t handle melee well. It doesn’t handle human scale conflict well, or social systems, or diplomacy, or non violent solutions.

It handles one thing, and that’s High Magic power fantasy. Which is why it’s worlds aren’t ruled by world building, they’re rules by “what would look awesome and provide players both the feel of being hyper-cool-magic-users while providing a spiraling upward series of challenges”

ok, if you put it that way, the writers did a terrible job about making a consistent setting, i agree.
does anyone use that kind of settings? well, perhaps someone does. nobody doing it at any of my tables would be taken seriously, though.
the writers may not care about setting up a consistent economy, but the dungeon masters do care, and their players too. so the kind of worlds you see at tables are generally better thought out.
You might notice this particular fantasy politics debate started with “hey, I think D&D made a glaring internal consistency error in world building”, but is worldbuilding part of the rules? does anyone use the numbers and fluff in the dmg as actual rules? again, i must guess somebody does.
so yes, if you put it that way, if you take everything ever written in published books at face value, then yes, this game sucks.
which is why i keep being amazed that people would ever suggest taking stuff at face value. if you cut away all the obvious rubbish, the game is excellent.

also, all of those things you say the game does not support well, it actually supports them well, if you can make the right adjustments. again yes, if you try to play strict raw, then it crumbles apart pretty soon if you try to do those things.

finally, while we all agree that magocracies would exhist - indeed, there was never any disagreement about this point - we are not agreed at all on how likely, common or stable they would be. i keep thinking they would be fairly rare in the long run, because ruling takes time, and wizarding takes time, and unless you use crazy high op time dilation tricks, your wizard won't have time to do both. more important, a wizard does not get much benefits from ruling, and he gets more problems and nuisances than it's worth. a wizard in charge would either turn burocrat and stop being a wizard, or would delegate all the actual ruling to someone else and only dictated general policies, at which point it's not so much of a magocracy anymore.
again, i find the aes sedai a realistic approach to what would happen to a magocracy over time. as the magic users became politicians, they practiced their magic less to practice politics more. and they got away with it as long as they were the only magic users, but when they faced other people whose magic users actually practiced magic as their main skill, all their lack of preparation became obvious.

[Asmotherion]

Setting Dependent.

In my custom setting, I have all noble houses of the civilised world secretly be Spellcasting Dragons, so there's my explanation, in addition to a rule of "maskarade" because the less common folk know, the better.

In most settings, most Rulers have their Wizard advisor, who, in a way, is responsible with dealing with major events, wile leaving mundane decisions to the less magical ruler. I mean, how much would a Wizars really care about wheat taxation or the proper protocol to get a hearing with the king? Not a whole lot I imagine.

Also, why bring instability to a town or citty when there is a Ruler with a rightful claim of power that the people respect (King or Otherwise)? If Roman History taught us anything is that Autocrats who rise in power via a Coup or via Force have short lived reigns, as people question their authority, and rebellion is more likelly to rise.

[hungrycrow]

Yeah I think I misspoke when I mentioned the status quo, please don't focus on that part. The point is that one god trying to form a straight up government, and thus implicitly taking away power/authority from other gods, is not going to go over well with those other gods. It's one thing to run around spreading the good word or even fighting with servants of other gods, it's another to try to acquire even more institutional power than a church normally has in this world.

As an example, let's say we've got two gods, Gork and Mork, and Generic Kingdom. Normally, the Generic Kingdom is led by a king, but that king is heavily dependent on the clerics of the two gods, and thus the churches of Gork and Mork have a lot of pull. But let's say that the church of Gork decides that they could rule better and depose the king with their Gorkly magics. That puts the church of Mork into an intensely vulnerable position. Even if the church of Gork is tolerant and allows the Morkians to continue doing their thing, now the government has all the clerical ability it needs. This means that the church of Mork has basically no pull in the Generic Kingdom anymore, no power other than their magical prowess. And what's to say the Gorkians stay tolerant? So in this scenario, the likely response from the Morkians is trying to stop the Gorkians, perhaps violently. And the Gorkians would be well aware of this. They'd be risking war for relatively minimal gain.

Now imagine that instead of two gods, it's 20. 20 individual churches all with their own clerics, goals, alliances, ideals, etc. Any church or alliance of churches taking control of the government is a huge threat to the power of all the others, and could easily piss off other groups entirely. This is usually how internecine wars start. Most well-entrenched political powers are going to be loathe to start anything, and especially unlikely to let anyone else start anything.

Pitting the churches against each other seems inherently unstable. Gorkians or morkians would stand to win everything as soon as they had any advantage over the other. Even with 20 or more churches, the same would happen if a handful formed a faction. Eventually the ruler would fail to maintain balance between the churches and the whole system would collapse.

[Cluedrew]

That assumption holds for magocracies, but not theocracies. In a theocracy:

Spoiler: […]

Show

• Priests come with a built-in structure that wizards don't: Wizards might all be loners sequestered in their wizard towers eschewing the formation of wizard guilds, but even small-fry Chaotic Evil gods tend to have their followers gather in cults instead of sending lone mad priests to do their thing, and where non-wizard arcanists have no reason to take on apprentices because sorcery can't really be passed on the way wizardry can, clerics are encouraged to proselytize to gain their god more followers.
• Priests have an excellent reason to be in positions of power: If you're a priest of a god of Justice or Community or Tyranny or Cities or the like, not only are you probably going to study government and politics as part of your religious devotions, but "I'm a high priest of the God of Governing Places Well" is likely to get you accepted by the public a lot better than "I'm a wizard and I have ideas!" would.
• In a D&D-like system, divine magic is correlated with wisdom and force of personality such that a powerful cleric (or favored soul, or shugenja, or...) is necessarily going to be much more insightful and personable than the average non-caster politician; granted, "personable" could mean either "feared and beloved Priest-Tyrant" or "good and noble King-Priest" so the populace might not like their priestly ruler, but it's more than can be said for powerful wizards either way.

So in any magic system where magocracies are at all possible, theocracies are actively encouraged, I'd say. And once you have a bunch of theocracies around, well, magocracies might very well spring up in reaction to that: a group of people who aren't faithful enough to be a priest of an existing theocracy or don't like the religions in charge or whatever, but who still want both magic and political power, might be encouraged to go the magocracy route, giving rise to a bunch of magocracies even if they wouldn't have arisen naturally on their own.

Quite right, in addition there is the whole issue of "what religion is it" which can make a whole lot of difference. You covered the main positive examples but one the other end: A religion of the god of gardening might not have an interest in national politics because that is a lot of non-gardening things to worry about. One of my favourite fictional religions has an anti-authoritarian aspect to it and choosing there leader has a round of "1 2 3 No Me!" in it.

The other personality thing I might add (other than wisdom) is I was sort of thinking of D&D CHA casters as well, who naturally have good people skills as well.

Pitting the churches against each other seems inherently unstable. Gorkians or morkians would stand to win everything as soon as they had any advantage over the other. Even with 20 or more churches, the same would happen if a handful formed a faction. Eventually the ruler would fail to maintain balance between the churches and the whole system would collapse.

In a given area maybe that would happen, but there are limits to how much power you can consolidate on a broader scale. Consider the existence of multiple countries in real life.

[mindstalk]

I take issue with a lot of arguments I'm seeing. My baseline for comparison is a 'typical' feudal society, of mostly hereditary mounted warriors.

* It takes lots of time to learn to be a wizard. -> It also takes lots of time to be a knight.

* Being smart at arcane power doesn't make you good at ruling. -> Being good at killing people with sword and lance doesn't make you good at ruling. Neither does having your father be such a person.

* You can't count on your orders getting obeyed. -> True conventionally as well. But scrying and mind-reading of subordinates would sure help!

* Can't single-handedly cure droughts and famines and disasters. -> Neither can ordinary people. But divine casters might get more divination warning about such things, and can offer relible cure magic to underlings to ensure loyalty.

Now, a valid counter is that feudal rulers were the best *generals*, leaders, not the best knights. But being able to be a passable warrior was typically a filter on getting to be a leader. What makes more sense in a magical world -- having your rulers be fighters or having them be people with at least some casting and good Will saves?

And of course there was Cha-based casters like sorcerers, with an intrinsic link between magical and social power.

* Having two jobs makes you worse at both -> Well, much of history could be described as "bad government"; the traits for getting power weren't the traits that made you good at wielding it.

* "Even if a wizard was to get to 10th level, and then decide they would want to rule the world, HALF of the world would still be more powerful them them." -> No, levels are uniformly distributed.

[el minster]

due to their inherent power they find themselves as above thed position of ruler. Why be a ruler when you can do whatever you want anyway?

[Vahnavoi]

I take issue with a lot of arguments I'm seeing. My baseline for comparison is a 'typical' feudal society, of mostly hereditary mounted warriors.

* It takes lots of time to learn to be a wizard. -> It also takes lots of time to be a knight.

By the rules of D&D, it takes less effort to become a fighter, barbarian, ranger or ranger, than it takes to become a wizard, druid or cleric. For example, the fastest learning human fighter will have 1 extra year to gain experience compared to the fastest learning wizard, and the slowest learning human fighter will have 6 extra years compared to the slowest learning wizard.

Sorcerers and like are a an exception to the rule that full casting takes longer to learn than no or partial casting, because they inherit their powers instead. But it just further emphasizes that classes and professions are not equal in the time and effort it takes to progress them.

Being smart at arcane power doesn't make you good at ruling. -> Being good at killing people with sword and lance doesn't make you good at ruling. Neither does having your father be such a person.

If your baseline is a feudal society, then who your parents are matters greatly. Before there were institutions of general learning and surplus of people and resources to run them, almost everybody had to be taught by their parents. Even today, a child born to wealthy academic parents might not inherit their IQ, but the fact that they're born and raised in an environment endorsing an academic mindset, with opportunities to pursue academic careers, makes them considerably more likely to continue their parents' success than a child born to non-intellectual poor parents.

* You can't count on your orders getting obeyed. -> True conventionally as well. But scrying and mind-reading of subordinates would sure help!

Sure it would. The joke is that the skills required to know where scrying and mindreading would be of most use has heavy overlap with skills required to give effective orders in the first place. But the same is not necessarily true for creating and using the spells. This is why people who build and maintain information networks in real life are rarely the same people who use those networks to employ political power.

* Can't single-handedly cure droughts and famines and disasters. -> Neither can ordinary people. But divine casters might get more divination warning about such things, and can offer relible cure magic to underlings to ensure loyalty.

Do you see medical doctors or weather forecasters holding political power as any kind of rule in real life? Same as above, just because a service would be useful, whether on individual or societal level, doesn't mean the people providing the service are the ones who end up with political power.

And of course there was Cha-based casters like sorcerers, with an intrinsic link between magical and social power.

Bards benefit from it more than sorcerers. The reason is that sorcerers get poorest skill progression and one of the poorest class skill lists. Because of this, a rogue or (NPC class) expert with average charisma who spends skill points on social skills, will outperform a sorcerer with 18 charisma at early levels. A bard vastly outperforms. Furthermore, due to not having focus on intelligence, a powerful sorcerer won't have equal edge in decision making compared to powerful wizard, druids or clerics.

This keeps in line with the idea that sorcerers are born with their power, with no or nearly no special training. This is both why they have earlier starting ages and worse class skill list compared to wizards. They have power and social appeal, yes, but all their other traits make them poor candidates for creating a magocracy.

[hungrycrow]

Bards do seem to have the ideal mix of spells and skills for messing with politics.
With their mastery of narrative structure, they should be ruling the entire cosmos by now!

[mindstalk]

People have addressed that multiple times already in the thread. No one is saying that wizards couldn't be rulers, only that they will not dominate because (using your example) the overall benefit of ruler doing the scrying compared to the ruler having a wizard to do the scrying for them is small (plus my side point that scrying, and lots of other spells in the books, aren't actually all that useful on a kingdom-ruling level).

The net benefit is small only if the king can trust the wizard. Looking at history, this is a great place for the wizard to control the king via controlling information going to the king. Politics is often not a high-trust environment.

"Ah, but then the wizard doesn't have to be king, they can just manipulate the king". But the manipulation takes work, and there are other manipulators at work, and the king gets the bulk of the taxes. Much easier in many ways to just *be* the king.

Likewise, the right scrying/divination/mind-reading can be really useful for letting the ruler 'trust' their subordinates, and keep power, even if it's not doing much to make them a "better ruler" from a peasant perspective.

This also touches on "why bother?": greed. Not just for power, but for all the resources extracted by the government, which exists largely to extract those resources.

"Oh, but the wizard can just make their own stuff and servants." How true is that really, at what level?

Long story short, and simplifying somewhat, a monarchy can be one of two things, an Absolute Monarchy where power flows from the monarch, or a Constitutional Monarchy where the power flows from the constitution or elected government.

That's simplifying far too much, into the realm of error.

[mindstalk]

where people would oppose your declaration that you were king because your army is tougher and stronger than the other armies on moral grounds, but that simply does not exist in medieval societies.

Not really true; legitimacy has often mattered, though in different ways than in a nationalist-democratic society. I'm reading Alexander of Macedon, and aspects beyond brute military power come up a lot. The first Persian to conquer Egypt insulted the religion badly, which caused trouble for 200 years; Alexander was more respectful and was seen as a genuine liberator. In conquering Persia itself Alexander tried to slip into being the next Great King, but he wasn't Zoroastrian, nor of the Achmaenid dynasty, so it didn't work and he snapped.

Elsewhere, Augustus became a monarch while carefully avoiding the Roman trappings of kingship, presumably because he thought that would make his life easier. To get power you want an army, to keep power without constant struggle you want an army and the priests and people not being allergic to you.

That said, there are certainly also many cases where people don't care much who's on top as long as they're left alone (not overtaxed and making their own local decisions). Alexander in Asia Minor was like that; many cities swapped easily from paying tribute to the Great King to paying "contributions" to the Hegemon of the Hellenic League.