In Johnstone Metzger’s Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn we were prompted to rate a couple of the properties of the Imperial Throne of the Galactic Empire. We ended up going with:
– Average Legal frameworks.
– Strong Market regulation.
– Strong Military power.
– Weak Popular support.
– Average Revenue collection.
Strong military power and weak popular support are pretty standard Space Fantasy trope, and I’ve had no trouble riffing on them to come up with plot ideas for our game.
I’m finding myself stumped on Strong Market regulation. We’ve defined it as strong, and I feel it should be important role, and be a jumping off point to challenge our protagonists.. but I’m stuck.
I figured I’d throw it open to you guys to see if you had any ideas or examples of what a galactic empire with strong market regulation could look like or how it could impact our characters in interesting ways.
Maybe smuggling is rampant and a black market presence is in effect due to the severe taxation on movement of any goods, considering everything is so regulated.
Well, you could go with Soviet-style bread lines and/or wartime food rations. Or just a tightly-controlled economy (ie Gosplan), which means you have to network and pull favours in order to get goods that you want (blat, it was called in Russian).
Or, since you have a strong military but only an average revenue base, maybe the throne is taxing the hell out of everything in order to pay for it. Tariffs on everything that moves from one port to another. Do the PCs want to travel? Taxes. Do they want to bring any goods with them? Taxes. Do they want to buy something from another planet? Taxes. They don’t have any money? Throw them in jail for smuggling!
Or, perhaps the authorities are taking more of a War on Drugs approach. The throne makes everything good illegal, then enforces those laws more strictly in communities it wants to subjugate. Trafficking profits create powerful criminal groups, which in turn act as justification to increase military spending.