An important facet of the background world is power
structures. Even in games with written backgrounds, the nature
of power structures is often inadequately described, which is
a shame as they are the driving force which makes human history
progress and make societies such fascinating things. In many
written game backgrounds, there is no mention of how power
structures are arranged, but unwritten assumptions seem to exist
like 'the King's in charge and people obey him'. This is a mental
cripple's view of how power structures work. In real societies,
no-one's ever completely in charge. Opposing forces compete for
power. Laws are never completely obeyed
or completely enforced. Rules are never completely kept to. Instead, there is a dynamic
conflict between those who seek to impose order on people and those who seek to free
themselves from such restraints. In one direction, a leader many impose rules on his people,
and try to catch those who disobey and punish them. In the other direction, a conservative
social group may try to restrain the actions of people through the force of custom,
threatening those who disobey the social code which they support with loss of respect in
society, while some try to break out of such tutelage: an example might be a leader who
theoretically must govern acording to accepted custom, and would face mass civil disobedience
if he was seen to go too far, yet tries to do as much as possible while still maintaining
control of the people.
All power structures depend on obedience. Power can be defined as that quality which
causes others to obey you. There are two types of obedience: obedience through free choice
(because you want to obey, or you consider it morally right to obey) or obedience through
fear of the consequences of disobedience. Power therefore rests on the ability to make people
want to obey, or to make them to have a moral sense which causes them to choose obedience, or
to make them too afraid to disobey. Making people want to obey is commonly done by
rewarding them. Many governments expend vast propaganda resources on
making people believe that obedience is right. Instilling fear is the surest form of
persuasion, but it rests on having the tools to do the job. The main tool of fear is the
oppressor, someone who comes along and hurts people who disobey. But an oppressor is an
individual, and he must be persuaded to do the oppressing, again by the three methods mentioned
above: reward, moral belief or fear. Such power structures naturally form pyramids: the ruler
at the top must make his lieutenants obey him, and their subordinates obey them, and the
subordinates oppress the man in the street. The higher someone is in the hierarchy,
the more it is necessary to buy his allegiance and the harder it is to instill fear into
him. The ruler's top men must be rewarded with material goods and power, yet the more
personal wealth and power they have the more danger there is to the ruler of their making
a break for independence. Each man wishing to increase his own influence must build such
a pyramid below him, rewarding those who obey him.
Example: I'm the King of England. The Duke of York isn't obeying me. I know that
every castle north of Sheffield is held by an army whose officers are loyal to York,
not to me. I consider York a threat and want to remove him. What do I do? Send an army
to arrest him? Then his armies will rise in rebellion. Would I then order them to stop
rebelling and obey me as I'm the King? But they wouldn't, because my kingship isn't
important to them: they obey York for their own reasons. So, the only course open to
me is to tolerate York, and try to keep him paying lip service to me at least, unless I
want to be the laughing stock of Europe.
There is no society in the world where people in authority simply command and those
below them simply obey. Every society is a dynamic conflict between ruler and ruled, one trying
to establish power and the other to be free of constraint. If the power tries to take
too much control, the ruled will rise up in protest. The 'ruler' is largely a victim of
circumstance, forced into making certain decisions because to do otherwise would lead to
his losing power. This really should be a consideration in writing game worlds. It is
necessary to sit down and think about how the power structures in the world work. Action
in the game then springs from the conflicts of interest going on in society.
In a game, the PCs could be on one side of a power struggle: either those trying
to enforce control, or those trying to resist it. It may be that PCs get drawn into
such a conflict whether they like it or not because life puts them in that position.
For instance, they could be press-ganged into a militia which is then used to oppress
the disobedient: they would then face to choice of obeying, and being oppressors, or
disobeying and becoming criminals, and having to fight the oppressors. Conflict
need not mean actual battle, though. It can happen at the level of social practice.
The PCs could be in a society where certain practices are required by tradition, and
others proscribed: there are some who choose to flout these customs, and they are
socially opporessed, people insult them in the street, some shopkeepers won't sell
to them, and so on. The PCs would then have to choose whether to obey the
customs or to stand against them and be oppressed.