CT LBB3 - LL/Govt
- Thread starter GamerDude
- Start date
GamerDude
Cosmic Mongoose
ok, lets see if I can explain this better.
Higher population levels drive the govt rating towards the more severe types of 'dictatorships'. But why can't a colony/population of say several hundreds be an intentional "religious dictatorship" and yet a world of "tens of billions" be a democracy? Unfortunately its very hard to randomly get that.
This is where my points about the planetary tech level comes in. A lower pop level can be thinly spread and still communicate real time if the tech level is there. On a lower tech level world it would be very difficult to maintain any kind of global dictatorship with a population of millions or billions of people.
At TL 6/7, we have the ability for fairly instant communications and yet we are "balkanized". Our pop level would be "9 - Billions of people", meaning our Gov't roll would be 2d+2, and would have to roll a "5" to randomly be "balkanized". Out of the 36 possible rolls on 2d, that means we have only four rolls that will give us a '5' (1,4; 4,1; 2,3; 3,2) or an 11.1 % chance of that happening? Are global dictatorships (of any sort) more likely to happen at our level of tech?
On the flip side, if our TL was like, 4/5, then it would be extremely difficult for us to have any kind of global gov't, yet the chances we would be anything but balkanized is extremely high as far as the current CT system works.
Look at the system, we determine tech level way after everything else, and the book even says the average is from 4 to 10. Using our current day stats our total mods on 1d for tech lvl would be +2 (for pop) giving a range of 3-9. The odds of randomly generating a world with Earth's size, hydrosphere, and population, our odds of rolling some kind of world gov't and having a tech level that is unable to support that govt are very good.
I hope that makes better sense.
Higher population levels drive the govt rating towards the more severe types of 'dictatorships'. But why can't a colony/population of say several hundreds be an intentional "religious dictatorship" and yet a world of "tens of billions" be a democracy? Unfortunately its very hard to randomly get that.
This is where my points about the planetary tech level comes in. A lower pop level can be thinly spread and still communicate real time if the tech level is there. On a lower tech level world it would be very difficult to maintain any kind of global dictatorship with a population of millions or billions of people.
At TL 6/7, we have the ability for fairly instant communications and yet we are "balkanized". Our pop level would be "9 - Billions of people", meaning our Gov't roll would be 2d+2, and would have to roll a "5" to randomly be "balkanized". Out of the 36 possible rolls on 2d, that means we have only four rolls that will give us a '5' (1,4; 4,1; 2,3; 3,2) or an 11.1 % chance of that happening? Are global dictatorships (of any sort) more likely to happen at our level of tech?
On the flip side, if our TL was like, 4/5, then it would be extremely difficult for us to have any kind of global gov't, yet the chances we would be anything but balkanized is extremely high as far as the current CT system works.
Look at the system, we determine tech level way after everything else, and the book even says the average is from 4 to 10. Using our current day stats our total mods on 1d for tech lvl would be +2 (for pop) giving a range of 3-9. The odds of randomly generating a world with Earth's size, hydrosphere, and population, our odds of rolling some kind of world gov't and having a tech level that is unable to support that govt are very good.
I hope that makes better sense.
SableWyvern
Mongoose
So wait...
Are you actually saying balkanisation should be more common on low tech worlds?
I can see two main reasons why low tech worlds could still have working global governemnts in the Traveller setting:
1. Balkanisation on earth is due mainly to civilisations and cultures developing independantly. Where a planet has been settled by a homogenous culture in the first place, this ceases to be an issue.
2. Planetary tech levels are not prohibitive. Governments and rich individuals will have access to tech above the planetary TL, and it is safe to assume that they will have the technology required to enable them to function.
These points may not be true of isolated systems or those not part of the Imperium, but this is where GM discretion comes into play.
As to the weight towards larger governements being less open and vice versa ... the designers have made an assumption that this is the case in the far future. It's as valid an assumption as any other upon which to base a generation system. We could argue forever over whether an Alistair Reynolds style democratic arnarchy where citizens are perpetually voting is feasible; until such a system develops there will be no conclusive answer.
Personally, I think the list I posted (or, you quoted) above offers a decent spread of governement types across the population bands. You'll note that there are two Pop7 representative democracies in there, as well as a Pop3 civil service bureaucracy, so while the system is weighted, it doesn't preclude these combinations.
Are you actually saying balkanisation should be more common on low tech worlds?
I can see two main reasons why low tech worlds could still have working global governemnts in the Traveller setting:
1. Balkanisation on earth is due mainly to civilisations and cultures developing independantly. Where a planet has been settled by a homogenous culture in the first place, this ceases to be an issue.
2. Planetary tech levels are not prohibitive. Governments and rich individuals will have access to tech above the planetary TL, and it is safe to assume that they will have the technology required to enable them to function.
These points may not be true of isolated systems or those not part of the Imperium, but this is where GM discretion comes into play.
As to the weight towards larger governements being less open and vice versa ... the designers have made an assumption that this is the case in the far future. It's as valid an assumption as any other upon which to base a generation system. We could argue forever over whether an Alistair Reynolds style democratic arnarchy where citizens are perpetually voting is feasible; until such a system develops there will be no conclusive answer.
Personally, I think the list I posted (or, you quoted) above offers a decent spread of governement types across the population bands. You'll note that there are two Pop7 representative democracies in there, as well as a Pop3 civil service bureaucracy, so while the system is weighted, it doesn't preclude these combinations.
ParanoidGamer said:
In part, because the larger the population the more is to be gained by the absolute tyrant...
Economic synergy is the propensity of a larger population to have a higher net value than the sum of its individuals would separately. Some of this is trade, some is specialization. This means a larger population can have a higher per capita income; thus there is more to tax, and higher taxation thus gains far more benefits to ths doing the taxing. Further, the larget the population, the more removed the leadership is from the population, no matter the tech level.
The Traveller scale isn't so much "Evil at high values" as "Impersonal at high values"... Evil is the resulting law levels.
As the US has grown, most places have in fact tightened up many of the laws, and police harrassment/encounters are more common now than ever, as are the numbers of law enforcement per capita in many places.
We can't at present distinguish between effects of increased population and increased technology level, but the two seem to correlate well across the western world.
As for Balkanization: it simply means there is no one "dominant" nation...
Were I to stat up earth, I'd use either the UN (Technically a republic, and has 95% of the population as member nations, and about 93% of the governments...), the US (Economic powerhouse: Representative Republic), or China (Civil Service Bureacracy, due to population)...
And just because a world isn't Balkanized doesn't mean it is a single nation-state on planet. It's just that the others are not big enough to make at least 40% of the population.
GamerDude
Cosmic Mongoose
I am thinking yes, the lower the tech level the more a planet will be balkanized.
going through earth's history (since it's the only reference we have), there have been many attempts to 'conquer' the world. Alexander, Egypt, Rome, Napoleon, Hitler. They tried but couldn't even conquer the what was (at the time) the entire known world, and what they did conquer collapsed under the weight of trying to control it all. Travel/communications times were so bad that they couldn't maintain their empires. These weren't even "Global" govt.
The assumption that anyone on a given world will have access to much higher TL stuff doesn't hold all the time. If this is a 'randomly generated' world that may be outside of any actual control (isolated, not actually known to the Imperium/interstellar govt, etc.)
"larger populations offer more to the tyrant"
The tyrant takes what he can get. If he can't hold it then he won't last long.
The UN has no enforcement authority (nations can and constantly do reject UN sanctions and resolutions), the US is loosing it's influence in the world (military stretched too far, others catching up in weapons tech, severe ideologies like radical Islam, etc), and China is caving into capitalism faster and faster (McDonald's is one of their greatest growth industries along with stuff like cellphones).
I'm not looking for absolutes, but I agree with like EDG that this is broken. For me it is the lack of better guidance, and how the charts are skewed towards "low tech worlds being corporate or balkanized or feudal" and hi pop worlds being "global dictatorships", which is the way the numbers/odds go.
going through earth's history (since it's the only reference we have), there have been many attempts to 'conquer' the world. Alexander, Egypt, Rome, Napoleon, Hitler. They tried but couldn't even conquer the what was (at the time) the entire known world, and what they did conquer collapsed under the weight of trying to control it all. Travel/communications times were so bad that they couldn't maintain their empires. These weren't even "Global" govt.
The assumption that anyone on a given world will have access to much higher TL stuff doesn't hold all the time. If this is a 'randomly generated' world that may be outside of any actual control (isolated, not actually known to the Imperium/interstellar govt, etc.)
"larger populations offer more to the tyrant"
The tyrant takes what he can get. If he can't hold it then he won't last long.
The UN has no enforcement authority (nations can and constantly do reject UN sanctions and resolutions), the US is loosing it's influence in the world (military stretched too far, others catching up in weapons tech, severe ideologies like radical Islam, etc), and China is caving into capitalism faster and faster (McDonald's is one of their greatest growth industries along with stuff like cellphones).
I'm not looking for absolutes, but I agree with like EDG that this is broken. For me it is the lack of better guidance, and how the charts are skewed towards "low tech worlds being corporate or balkanized or feudal" and hi pop worlds being "global dictatorships", which is the way the numbers/odds go.
SableWyvern
Mongoose
ParanoidGamer said:
Again, I think this is a faulty comparison when looking at worlds that have been colonised by an external, homogenous culture (ie, the vast majority of Imperial worlds)
Most worlds in most Traveller games will be Imperial, and have access to the Imperial trade network. It makes sense to base the world generation defaults on the assumption that worlds are Imperial. Some guidance for the GM when developing non-Imperial worlds makes sense, but writing a basic framework that assumes a non-Imperial world seems silly. The basic world gen won't give you Zhodani, Aslan, Vagr or Hiver relevant results either. A set of alternate tables for these situations might be worthwhile at some point; in the meanwhile, GM discretion will enable any rolled results to be modified to suit non-standard conditions.
I agree that some discussion and advice on alternatives is all but mandatory.
This isn't broken. It's a subjective design decision. Making all Gov codes equally possible, or biasing in a different way is just as subjective.
the more he can get, the more he can afford to keep.ParanoidGamer said:
ParanoidGamer said:
Well, considering the recent moves towards authoritarianism in almost all the so-called democratic nations... high tech definitely does allow easier and more thorough authoritariansim. The latter half of the 20th century is a rise in authoritarianism across the board...
AKAramis said:
I agree that Tech makes control easier, but it makes 'criticism' available to the general population as well.
Not to delve too far into current politics, but on this point watch China, and the US Elections. Both are showing increased 'reaction' to authoritarianism and a demand for more 'Individual Rights'.
I think that the pendulum is about to swing sharply the other way in the US. The word on MY street is the Gov't has gone too far ... time to change some lawmakers and repeal some laws. And my friends are conservative (generally opposed to change), imagine how the liberals (generally in favor of change) feel.
China may appear to swallow Hong Kong, but I suspect that history will show that Hong Kong will have swallowed China. Humans crave liberty and all Dictators eventually fall. The UK has one of the oldest continuous governments - how authoritarian is the 'King' (a Queen at the moment)?
atpollard said:
The Royal Family has pretty much no authority, they're just figureheads. It's Parliament and that has the power.
To be honest, lately we've been seeing huge problems with the democratic system - have you noticed how many national elections in various countries have been dead heats this century? There seems to be an awful lot of them (the most infamous being the Gore/Bush US election) - you get a case where half the population wants one party and the other half want the other, which means the maximum possible number of people are pissed off about the results and that are lumbered with a leader they didn't want for 4 years. (I guess it's better than having ALL the people pissed off at the results, but not by much IMO).
Though then you also get weird situations like in the US where half the people wanted Bush as President, but somehow the Republicans dominated the Congress and Senate at the same time. So you have the most unpopular president you can get (simply because half the people didn't want him), who runs an entirely sympathetic government that can and will approve anything he says (and given the post-9/11 climate that was pretty easy to do). That basically led to a government that could do anything it pleased without any checks and balances because the opposition was too weak - now that Congress and Senate have swung the other way though, the table's turned and the checks and balances are back and of course the Republicans are annoyed that they can't do what they want anymore (and before anyone claims I'm Bush-bashing, I'm not - just pointing out the reality of how his government worked. The same applies to Blair in the UK as well when Labour swept into power - although the opposition was more vocal there, they were still pretty powerless to vote against anything Blair wanted to do).
(Coincidentally there's an interesting article on the US Government's relation to democracy on the BBC news site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7171581.stm )
The point is that "democracy" has its own problems and can itself be authoritarian at times. I think it was Churchill that said "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time".
Though personally I think it's somewhat naive to call our governments today "representative democracies". The UK is arguably more like a Civil Service Bureaucracy (or an Impersonal one depending on your viewpoint) that happens to vote people in every now and then. The US is so dominated by lobbies and special interest groups that the opinion of the actual people seems to seldom matter anymore - I'd probably call that an Impersonal Bureaucracy myself (that's the closest to that on the list I think - or possibly a Self-Perpetuating Oligarchy).
EDG said:
No disagreement on the details, but note that the "Bush Era" at the greatest possible measure is only 12 years (counting both presidents) out of a 200+ year history. In Traveller terms, that sort of 'blip on the screen' will not even register.
Rather than "20th century shows increased totalitarianism", I think that the lesson is that all governments move towards Totalitarianism during wars/crisis and towards Anarchy (personal freedom) during times of peace. It also seems to me that the people can and do change their government - Who in the Peoples Party would have raised their hand one day to suggest to the Chairman "I think that China should become more capitalist and open." That has to be a bottom up change.
Extremes seem hard to maintain. The other side always has some valid points and not even an atom bomb will kill a bureaucracy. Bringing this 100% back to Traveller, I favor a shallow bell curve with moderate governments (lots of bureaucracies) in the middle and Anarchy and Dictators at opposite extremes. With no modifiers to the roll since anything is possible.
DaltonCalford
Mongoose
If the system is going to change, I would suggest a table that represents the overall type of area that the planet exists in.
For example, in the wilds, you will get a far different group of governments than you would amongst the Aslan or Hiver.
The imperium itself should lead to a system leading to corporate or feudal leaderships, since the larger government system favours such systems.
There are eight different primary government types as per wikipedia, with the other types being but variations on a theme.
The biggest difficulty I see with changing the system is supporting existing UPP's. I think this can be overcome with the use of tables and modifiers that will allow for more variation upon the planetary generation theme.
The original LBB method was designed to quickly generate planets. LBB6 made it a long drawn out method to generate planets. LBB6 added so much more detail but also increased the amount of time to create a system.
I personally would love to see new values added to the UPP. Biosphere mass, biosphere diversity, infrastructure etc. I think that the government system works for the time being and that the other areas should be addressed.
Just my two cents
Dalton
For example, in the wilds, you will get a far different group of governments than you would amongst the Aslan or Hiver.
The imperium itself should lead to a system leading to corporate or feudal leaderships, since the larger government system favours such systems.
There are eight different primary government types as per wikipedia, with the other types being but variations on a theme.
The biggest difficulty I see with changing the system is supporting existing UPP's. I think this can be overcome with the use of tables and modifiers that will allow for more variation upon the planetary generation theme.
The original LBB method was designed to quickly generate planets. LBB6 made it a long drawn out method to generate planets. LBB6 added so much more detail but also increased the amount of time to create a system.
I personally would love to see new values added to the UPP. Biosphere mass, biosphere diversity, infrastructure etc. I think that the government system works for the time being and that the other areas should be addressed.
Just my two cents
Dalton
GamerDude
Cosmic Mongoose
And a fine two cents it is Dalton.DaltonCalford said:
You hit on what I was talking about... ending up at some random world not under imperial control. Uncharted/undiscovered, not inside imperial controlled space, etc...
The aslan and hiver point definately blows the tables out the door, but I don't think LBB3 was really meant to cover those worlds.
DaltonCalford said:
I knock it down to four myself, making no distinction of how they got to power:
Code:
Autocracy: rule by a single individual (Monarchy, Despotism, Dictatorship)
Democracy: rule by direct will of the general populace. (Direct or Representative)
Oligarchy: rule by an elite group of people. (Oligarchy, Plutocracy, Theocracy)
Anarchy: no central government (Anarchy, Balkanised)Everything in Traveller boils down to those four main types.
SableWyvern
Mongoose
EDG said:
Yeah, my understanding is that on a technical level, many of those wikipedia listed governments are subsets of each other, or even synonyms (despotism, dictatorship), even though in general usage they often carry different connotations.
captainjack23
Cosmic Mongoose
I'm back ! Damn storms......
really, two points - the increased spread of the old govts did two things - allowed more chhrome for the harried GM to hang a story/system on, and filled up the 0-E table paradigm. The first is very useful, the second is....well call it a side effect.
Really, given MWM's sociopolitical background, and I'm not starting a fight here, I swear, it's much like starsystem generation...the level of detail is a compromise between play effect and academic knowlege. Technicaly one can say "planet, big" or "Planet, breathable" for the mainworld, be correct, and leave it at that. Not as much fun, really.
Without derailing the (very good) discussion here, how do we benefit play from a more accurate higher level categorization of Govt types ? (real question, not bait)
I also note that the above 4-6 categories assume highly federated governments at all levels ; An autocracy can be a junta (triumvirate, say).
Also, does Wikipedea define Feudal technocracy yet ?
Oh yeah. The other thing - a REAL nitpick. Anarchy is a government - it's just one without leaders. A situation with No government is better described as chaos or "none". An anarchy could be just as world-spanning as a dictatorship - in fact lots of interesting science fiction revolve around this very issue - what does a government without leaders resemble ?
SableWyvern said:
really, two points - the increased spread of the old govts did two things - allowed more chhrome for the harried GM to hang a story/system on, and filled up the 0-E table paradigm. The first is very useful, the second is....well call it a side effect.
Really, given MWM's sociopolitical background, and I'm not starting a fight here, I swear, it's much like starsystem generation...the level of detail is a compromise between play effect and academic knowlege. Technicaly one can say "planet, big" or "Planet, breathable" for the mainworld, be correct, and leave it at that. Not as much fun, really.
Without derailing the (very good) discussion here, how do we benefit play from a more accurate higher level categorization of Govt types ? (real question, not bait)
I also note that the above 4-6 categories assume highly federated governments at all levels ; An autocracy can be a junta (triumvirate, say).
Also, does Wikipedea define Feudal technocracy yet ?
Oh yeah. The other thing - a REAL nitpick. Anarchy is a government - it's just one without leaders. A situation with No government is better described as chaos or "none". An anarchy could be just as world-spanning as a dictatorship - in fact lots of interesting science fiction revolve around this very issue - what does a government without leaders resemble ?