Your Campaign's Government: Good, Complicated, or Evil?

[OddHat]

So, are the democratic National Governments in your game world generally Good, Evil, or Complicated?

Vile conspiracy ridden villains, hardworking public servants, or something else?

Are your Heroes doing the right thing be stopping Doctor Destroyer, or would the world be better off under the iron heel of an honest dictator?

Poll to follow.

[SirViss]

The campaign i am running is based on the CU, and I am trying for an ealry Bronze Age feel, so the government is usually good. Of course, it's just not the same if there aren't a few government conspiracies. Just including the IHA will make sure of this.

[SKJAM!]

When and if I start a campaign again, the government will be loosely based on my impressions of the real one. So it will have a lot of people who are just doing their jobs (at varying levels of competency), a scattering of truly dedicated public servants, a scattering of corrupt power-mad illegitimate children (who are more organized than the goodies), and some horribly misguided folk who truly believe their appalling behavior is in the best interests of the nation.

Naturally, the latter two groups will be the ones who insist on interacting with the player characters.

[Edsel]

I am running a Dark Champions vigilante game right now, based in Hudson City. The goverment is pretty much as it is presented in the sourcebook.

The only addition was the sentient pies in leadership positions. At first the players were a little put off by them but since have decided that they are delicious.

[The Rose]

I run a Star Hero Game at the moment. And although there are a lot of 9-5ers, A good select few are "misguided, Misunderstood, and just plan power hungry." So I would have to say overall good but the upper echelons have there own agendas not relevent to the people. But I build the government on my interpritation of Rome under the first couple of Ceasars, but of course new age tech.


la Rose


PS- Everyone LoVeS pIe, no matter how evil they are!

[CrosshairCollie]

I put down 'good, but a few bad apples'. I almost went for the one below it, with conspiracies, but they aren't so much 'government conspiracies' as 'conspiracies that happen to involve members of the government'. More like 'one Senator's on the IHA's payroll' rather than 'there's a secret Supers Containment Committee that feeds info to the IHA' kind of thing.

My players are cynical enough, sadly, that even when I outright tell them this, out-of-character, GM-to-players, though, they don't really believe it.

[WhammeWhamme]

Good, and sharing absolutely no members with their real world counterparts.

With, of course, some evil bastiches to have conspiracies, blacker than the depths of hell itself ops, and create crazy eeeeeevil legislation.

I mean, you NEED some evil bastiches.

[CrosshairCollie]

Good, and sharing absolutely no members with their real world counterparts.

Good point ... I failed to mention this in my post. To the extent of my knowledge, all of my politicians are imaginary.

Unless the President is really a black Jewish lesbian and I never noticed ...

[TheRavenIs]

Complicated, with a few good and bad men and a lot of 9 to 5ers. That is how mine seems to run.

[Kristopher]

Complicated.

[assault]

Pie, with a few bad apples.

It's apple pie, obviously.

[David Blue]

Complicated.Ditto.

I am more likely to take over a friend's game soon than to restart my own, but this wouldn't change the basics of government, which I adopted practically wholesale because they worked so well for him in the first place.

Government is basically good, that is things like sewage, the post office and public hospitals function well enough most of the time. Political parties do not do things that alienate their wealthiest and most generous donors, large minority groups with clout, or the mass of ordinary people who care about the rights of those like themselves.

This benevolence does not extend to supers. Government is always potentially, but not necessarily or often actively, hostile to supers. "My kind of power is fair and fine, people with your kind of power need to be watched carefully" - that is the mentality. Also, government guards the general good sincerely but with an uncertain eye and constantly wavering attention, while villains each push forward their particular agendas with single-minded persistent zeal.

There are three basic states in regard to supers. The default is government by people who win the equivalent of J. Jonah Jameson's endorsement. (J. Jonah Jameson is not an evil man, nor does he knowingly endorse evil men. Nor does he hate supers in general.) In a rare bad year (or let's say once in the campaign) the Penguin or Lex Luthor gets elected. (However, the possibility that the campaign Lex Luthor (based in my friend's game on a real world tycoon everyone agreed was corrupt, ambitions and dangerous) might get a total cats paw elected, and how everything would stand then, is a campaign constant. Players are encouraged always to think how information and resources held by the government would be used by the campaign political threat, or someone just as bad, because sooner or later they will be.) In a fairly common good year you get the sort of government seen in X-Men (2000), X2: X-Men United (2003) and mainly in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006).

This includes the presence of people like William Stryker and "Senator Kelly" in X2: X-Men United (2003). That, you can never get rid of. Government keeps files on supers that always grow, never shrink, and are available to such people (maybe with some effort).

Also, being in government does not mean people don't lie to you and do things behind your back. It means you lie back to them with equal impunity and do things behind their backs.

The military functions as in Hulk (2003).

The prison system for supers works basically as depicted in X2: X-Men United (2003).

The legal system functions as seen in Hulk (2003) and X2: X-Men United (2003). That is, possession (being in the governments's hands) is nine tenths of the law where supers are concerned. This applies to both heroes and villains. Public pressure to uphold the theoretical rights of people like Cyclops, who can blow up a train station by looking at it hard, does not exist.

There will be a special super crime commission based on a real world anti-racketeering commission that offended me so much all the details stuck in my memory and I always use it. The accused had rights to know all about their accusers, starting with their true identities and where they lived. (Nice kids, squire: shame if something would happen to them.) Those bringing accusations had no power to cross-examine the accused, and the commission had no power to investigate without the permission of the accused. (Rather, it would have refered possible cases to the same police force notoriously entwined with, and often identical to, the top racketeers.) No witness ever appeared before the special commission - not because of a lack of racketeering. Rather, the commission nobly showcased the majesty of the law and the government's theoretical willingness to take on criminals who weren't easy marks.

Policing functions as seen in Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man 2 (2006): when a hero has earned great popularity with ordinary people, and is engaged in something that is good and likely to mean that the police will have less personally dangerous work to do as a result, and is on his feet and a hard target, police defer any consideration of law enforcement to the tomorrow that never comes.

If a target is less popular but more dangerous, they are less likely to be attacked or harassed. Nobody wants to die. Typically, nobody saw which way Doctor Octopus went, even though his tentacles hit external walls like mighty drums.

Waiting for the law to solve your problems for you works exactly as depicted in The Punisher (2004): whether you wait days, weeks, months or years, nobody is going to go to jail for anything.

Government typically deals with supers through quasi-autonomous non-government organisations ("quangos"), in which people of great wealth and deeply involved in behind the scenes politics have great influence, for which they are not held accountable. Quangos are designed primarily to ensure that nobody, especially no politician, is ever held legally accountable for anything.

The development of artificial "kryptonite" in my friend's campaign was due to the first (and last) player character to take the excellent money available for volunteering superpower and physiology testing. This did not go down well with other player characters having the same vulnerability. From time to time, non-player characters (usually with urgent financial problems and lousy powers) still take the money. This facilitates the design of new generations of "Spider Slayers" and similar or larger constructs as well as other rumored projects, with no need for more superhuman assistance than is willing to walk in the door voluntarily.

The government maintains an official super-team, with a menacing name such as ASP (the first such name, devised by yet another local gamemaster using a basically similar pattern of government vs. super interaction) or my preference the FATE (Federal Anti Terrorist Executive). The team has excellent vehicles and equipment, official training, and a capacious, luxurious and inviting mid-city headquarters with plenty of room for guests and friends, and high tech external and mainly 24 hour internal monitoring everywhere.

The FATE, or equivalent, solves problems for the nation, or more precisely for the politicians in power. This can mean fighting crime, fighting villains, fighting other national super-teams, fighting independent minded heroes or hero groups, or fighting to uphold friendly fascists and racists in foreign countries. The kind of person likely to be happy in the FATE will regard all these tasks as equally satisfactory if the risk is low enough and the pay is good.

Spurred by government or more likely media pressure ("I want Spider-Man!"), the government may well hound an individual hero if he is not too powerful and preferably if he has a known code against killing. A super team is a less inviting prospect, though efforts are sure to be made to infiltrate it. Persistently hounding V.O.I.C.E. is the sort of thing that would only happen theoretically and for public consumption. Rather, the government will try to take the credit if heroes take V.O.I.C.E. down, or blame "vigilantes" for collateral damage if things go pear-shaped.

(New): if taking on a dangerous cult like Viper will lead to a politician needing to live under protection like Hirsi Ali, other politicians will take heed and not make a similar mistake. However, lambasting superheroes who never decapitate people or engage in terrorism and intimidation will remain a free swing for individual politicians, especially just before elections.

The government is typically risk averse, even timid. Its most dangerous operatives come at you sideways, smiling and looking for a weakness to hit. They don't believe hard, or usually at all. They aren't going to be backed up if they fall, so they don't believe in high-impact methods.

Simultaneously declaring war on every super jealous of his, her or its independence is not the sort of thing government typically would do. If the Penguin got elected and insisted on it, enforcement would be spotty, affected or over-ridden by personal relationships such as between Batman and Sergeant Gordon in Batman Begins (2005), and personally very cautious.

In this context, heroes are moral because they are internally driven to be moral. This makes them special. Remarkable powers, for good or evil, go to remarkable people. Disadvantages such as code against killing or must be a hero (the "Mister Incredible" disadvantage) should be common and worth full points, since they will matter.

[Lxndr]

Definitely complicated, leaning towards "good with a few bad apples."

[Matt Frisbee]

The Bay City Rollers Campaign had the Bureau of Metahuman Affairs in the federal government, which was intended to coordinate the actions of superheroic metahumans. Many times, the characters turned to the organization for assistance and equipment in taking down particularly challenging supervillains. Bay City also had a MARS unit, which was designed to back up local heroes. In general, the heroes trusted the government and vice-versa, since both had much the same goals -- protecting the powerless from the ruthless metahumans who would enslave them.

The other side of the coin included the supervillains Isotope - The Radioactive Man (created by nuclear weapons testing), Graviton (a disgruntled weapons designer who was out to prove his battlesuit truly was superior) and Buzzsaw (created in an industrial accident caused by a government contractor who cut corners to save money on a government project).

So, I guess it was mostly good with a few bad apples.

Matt "What-if-the-government-really-was-here-to-help-you" Frisbee

[David Johnston]

Gee, there's no slot for "Good but filled with stupid people".

[Kenn]

In the RCU USA there was a major upheaval in the national governement several years back. Now the "big two" parties are the Freedom Party and the Justice Party, with the New Democrats and the New Republicans trying to regain lost ground. And the Libertarians are making more headway.

But there are good guys and bad guys. The depths of President Mahn's evil are unrevealed (and with Savien and Lezantauw reading these boards that's all I'm saying here) but he's made Spectrum (a PC Hero) a member of his cabinet (Secratary of Parahuman Relations.)

[Lord Liaden]

"Complicated" pretty well fits how I run representative governments, which is what I believe I see in the real world. IMO the majority just treat it as a job (particularly in the bureaucracy), but there are a few dedicated servants of the people, a few who are in the game purely for their own benefit, and a few sincere but misguided sorts. For good or bad, though, the "fews" are often in positions of power, perhaps because they're the people with the most drive. However, the public face of the government highlights the good side, because those with "evil" motivations recognise that they have to conceal them from the public.

Oh, and to tell you the truth, I honestly don't like pie.

[wrestlinggeek]

Oh, and to tell you the truth, I honestly don't like pie.

:eek: How can you not like pie!? Everybody likes pie!:D Anyway, I picked "Mostly good with few Evil..." At least for now. There is an election coming up soon in Campaign City, and that may change things...

[Black Omega]

I classify the government in my Supernatural compaign as pragmatic and ruthless, sometime elements power hungry. So I suppose I'll vote Complicated. Yes, there are people trying to weaponize the supernatural and who don't care if a few eggs get broken along the way. And there are some practical people simply trying to keep the country safe.

[jkwleisemann]

:eek: How can you not like pie!? Everybody likes pie!:D Anyway, I picked "Mostly good with few Evil..." At least for now. There is an election coming up soon in Campaign City, and that may change things...
Y'mean dark horse candidate Strawberry Rhubarb might steal the electorate? :p

At any rate, I voted for the Complicated end of things, leaning towards good. Most members of the government, especially at lower levels, aren't bad sorts. Unfortunately the bad sorts are there, and have this tendency to arrange things that end up making the good ones look bad in the end. "Department M" in particular - the Metahuman wing of the government in my base campaigns - was overrun by some of the more zealous sorts.

They're responsible for the creation of the Purifier droids (the gov'ts emergency response droids that handle major supervillain threats... and have this surprising knack for finding mutants committing crimes in isolated areas without witnesses), back both the Purity League and P.U.R.E., the supervillain and political anti-mutant organizations, and were largely responsible for the creation of M.A.R.S., the campaign's equivalent of the Brotherhood.

Now, mind you, I don't run full-blown anti-mutant panic, but Department M and their sympathizers are generally a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off.

And no, they don't feature in the Milwaukee Masks setting, so I don't worry about pointing that out. :p

[Lxndr]

I've never liked pie.

But I like complicated governments.

[gojira]

I picked *FIVE*, including pie.

I picked Good, but with dark hidden conspiracies, and Complicated, because this describes the default US government best. There are definately Weapon X conspriactys hidden in the US government because that's more interesting for the players, plot-wise.

Most of the government is made of hardworking people who don't know anything besides their 9 to 5 job. This describes most governments over the world as well. But some big ambitious governements like the US have secret programs, and those sometimes get out of control.

Then there are evil governments who oppose all that is good and right. Gotta have those. These got Evil, a nest of vipers and corruption because many are just corrupt 3rd world countries. But they also got Evil, foul hives of villainy, because some also actively plot with villains. Think Genosha and the Taliban rolled into one.

[Kenn]

I don't care for pie either.

The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, I can handle though: 3.14159265....

[Zed-F]

I picked Complicated and Good with some bad apples. I'm not a big fan of government conspiracy plots; I got X-file'd out some years back.

[Spiral]

In the world I run it's mostly good but with a few bad seeds thrown in to stir things up. You can’t make a good pie with just one perfect apple sometimes a few sour ones give it a distinct taste.

[zornwil]

Mine's the "complicated" version, with a tremendous amount of conspiracies (remember, conspiracies can be good in motivation, too).

[EvilDrPuma]

Well, see, there's this secret, behind the scenes conspiracy of sentient pieces of pie who truly believe they are doing what's best, but in fact are pawns of Nyarlathotep....

[Balabanto]

Well, my government has had a ton of problems, though when my universal rewrite occurs shortly I have no idea how I'm going to deal with some of them. (Primus will become something else because I can't use anyone else's stuff without breaking a lot. Paranormal Tactical Analysis Headquarters is currently in the lead.)

The Government Super Control Organization was secretly run by a brain transplanted, still surviving Adolf Hitler, who was the last priest of Odin in the world and was trying to restore the Norse Pantheon to it's former greatness.

After this, the President who replaced the man that he assassinated in the white house was secretly a duplicating supervillain named Legion X.

Since Legion X's defeat and exile to the nation of Biafra, once again, the government is basically good with a few bad apples. I just didn't expect both those plots to be revealed within 2.5 years of each other. (Yeah. My game has run a LONG, LONG time. Makes you wonder how I survive the rewrites, I hope.)