Volkthing

[jatay3]

Is Swordie society completly oliogarchic? If they are such conscious imitators of Early Medieval Germanics would they always have missed this point? In old times several Germanic tribes had councils called things or moots. Usually they were meetings of anyone in the villiage of a reasonable degree of repectability(yeoman-farmers for instance). They were essentially like New England town meetings though they often emphasized the judicial rather than legislative side.
Might a custom like this exist in the Sword Worlds? Say a "Volkthing" which tries minor local cases (How much does Olaf have to pay when he loses his miniphant and lets it trample Ericks crops), discusses minor points(do we let Old Elfwine's Transport build a Grav-Truck stop in our town and for how much?)or makes appeals to the Jarl(our militia captain is a *** coward can't you find someone else?). It obviously would not have an obvious part to play at high levels(or they would have been mentioned) but Volkthings might have a lot of influence at the local level.

 

[Malenfant]

I'm positive I saw a "thing" described as a government in the library data bit of the playtest files for the Sword Worlds book... I can't find it in the book though.

I'll poke Paul, Robert, or Hans (the Sword World book authors) and see if they can answer this and your other question...

 

[pauldrye]

The Sword World governments are all over the place. They revived 9th century Scandinavian culture in the -1200s when they were first colonizing the Sword Worlds, and the current revival is looking back to that time as much as medieval times.

So since the society of the early days of the Sword Worlds was based on the heirarchy of the military units they were, the modern Sword Worlders have two contradictory models to draw upon.

Most of their planets have a democratic period somewhere in their past, but the long-term trend has been towards nobility ruling.

 

[etherflyer]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
I'm positive I saw a "thing" described as a government in the library data bit of the playtest files for the Sword Worlds book... I can't find it in the book though.

See the section on Sword World characters. I used "Thingman" in there, implying the existence of a Thing, but I don't know if this was reflected in the actual world writeups. I'd intended that it would be, but forgot to remind Paul and Hans of it. It's entirely possible that the Thing was a local government on a world ruled by another form of government entirely, so it's not a serious mistake

That's one of two errors in the book I wish I'd spotted in playtest. The other is the Sword Worlds Police -- I'd written up the Patrol assuming that they _were_ the police, and that they mostly functioned like Interpol, but there's a library data entry I didn't spot that creates a Sword Worlds Police. As I can't find any references to them in previous canon, I don't include them IMTU

A third error was added by the editor (or someone at SJG) after the playtest. In the intro to Gender Distinctions (p.107) it is stated that women are "compelled" to be passive. This is not born out by the rest of the book! I had written "encouraged", which is a better way of putting it.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Paul_Drye:
The Sword World governments are all over the place. They revived 9th century Scandinavian culture in the -1200s when they were first colonizing the Sword Worlds,

Hum. That certainly isn't what I had in mind. In fact, they specifically didn't copy anything of Viking culture to begin with (Not conciously, anyway). That's why I made such a point out of putting the revival in 'Viking Revival' in quotes (Though my memory plays me false here; I would have sworn that it was the 'Viking' I had put in quotes).

"A key plank of the movement's platform was a return to the values of an earlier time. These values were concocted from a romanticized version of the early days on Gram, along with an even more romanticized version of the Viking Age on Old Terra." [GT:Sword Worlds, p.19.]

I went to considerable trouble to point out that when the Sword Worlders decided to recreate their glorious past, they got a lot of it wrong.

"A lot of the gender distinctions that is found in the present-day Sword Worlds did not exist in the early days. There were no "male" and "female" jobs, only dangerous jobs that women need not take and safe jobs that anyone might do. Men served as babysitters, nurses, and kindergarten teachers, and women served as judges and administrators." [ibid. p. 8]


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by jatay3:
Is Swordie society completly oliogarchic?

Hrunting and Mjolnir are representative democracies. Quite a few of the others are bureaucracies. Some of the oligarchies are nominal democracies. Very few are pure oligarchies.


Hans

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Robert Prior:
That's one of two errors in the book I wish I'd spotted in playtest. The other is the Sword Worlds Police -- I'd written up the Patrol assuming that they _were_ the police, and that they mostly functioned like Interpol, but there's a library data entry I didn't spot that creates a Sword Worlds Police. As I can't find any references to them in previous canon, I don't include them IMTU

That one is down to me. They were created when I wrote one of the adventure seeds. There's no reference to them elsewhere.

I don't see how the Confederation Police writeup conflicts with the Patrol writeup, though. The Patrol has jurisdiction over interplanterary crimes. The CP gets involved in multiple-jurisdiction cases and is usually allowed (grudgingly) to pursue criminals from one planetary jurisdiction in other planetary jurisdictions - provided they keep the local police apprised. The two functions do not even overlap.

A third error was added by the editor (or someone at SJG) after the playtest. In the intro to Gender Distinctions (p.107) it is stated that women are "compelled" to be passive. This is not born out by the rest of the book! I had written "encouraged", which is a better way of putting it.

My biggest regret is that the rockets drives somehow got through the writing and playtesting (And that Hansen's Landing got moved from its proper position next to Ny Kalmar to somewhere clear across a huge bay). I know I objected to them early in the writing, but I must have overlooked them in the later revisions (I know I reread everything at least once (and some of it many, many times

).


Hans

 

[jatay3]

I don't see how the Confederation Police writeup conflicts with the Patrol writeup, though. The Patrol has jurisdiction over interplanterary crimes. The CP gets involved in multiple-jurisdiction cases and is usually allowed (grudgingly) to pursue criminals from one planetary jurisdiction in other planetary jurisdictions - provided they keep the local police apprised. The two functions do not even overlap.
----------------------------
or they could be interchangable-two names for the same organization

 

[jatay3]

Looking more carefully I believe I found a couple instances of what I described including one on Sacnoth(dispiccable traitors though they are-the Imperium needed to render the Swordies less powerful so they can be excussed, but BWA's rulers bear a distinct resemblance to grovellers).