Fractal Setting Three: Pyramid of Empire (Star Wars Part 1)

Fractal setting Creation three: 

A familiar example: Star Wars Part 1

The Empire

The Empire’s Pyramid: 

1.Emperor

2.Vader/Moff Tarkin/ Aristocracy*

3 Organized crime; (formerly)the senate.

4. Top brass military officers- the guys Vader likes to choke

5. Military Personnel: Officers and administrative staff.

6. Enforcers: Stormtroopers; cops.

7. Citizens

8.Droids/slaves

Excepting the emperor, each category has a pyramid of it’s own- and in many cases, pyramids at the same level or even adjacent levels may battle over resources or power- or just as mutual expression of anger and hatred- even the Emperor is not immune. 

*the place of the aristocracy in the empire is ambiguous at best. Assuming it’s old money and and old boy network controlled, a place near the top seems fitting. 

It may or may not be useful to design a similar pyramid for your current setting. 

Of course we can argue about the exact placing below, if you like

Fractal Setting 2

Pic unrelated?

Sentients: 

Heroes: Individuals who sacrifice their own interest in service to those who are unable to help themselves. Heroes often, but not always, have special resources, skills and/or powers. 

Heroes can work alone or in groups. Both egalitarian and hierarchical groups  exist.  Heroes generally arrange hierarchies  based upon experience and intelligence.  Hero motivations vary, but the greater good is nearly always the foundational philosophy of the hero. 

Villains: Individuals driven by selfishness and greed, often remorseless; power hungry; murderous and cruel.  Villains always have a hierarchy based on power and fear. Fear is power. Most villains, regardless of their place in the hierarchy,  have similar goals: To gain, expand and exploit turf. Villain hierarchies are generally arranged in a pyramid style. The desires of the chief villain have more impact on the arrangement of the pyramid than the power of fear. Villains often feel they have a monopoly on the use of violence. 

Governments operate in exactly the same manner as villains. 

Citizens: The vast and overwhelming majority of beings who live and die in the turf the villains exploit and the heroes protect. All citizens are in danger all the time, but citizens attached to a hero in even the most ephemeral way are in constant danger from every imaginable sort of hazard, ranging from abduction to cancer to meteor strike- anything can (and will) happen to these people. 

Forces: Inscrutable beings of immense personal power. Forces act according to their own mysterious and motivations, often with catastrophic consequences. Forces manifest  in countless ways; some examples: a living planet; a giant life hating robot; planet eating space monsters; a vast, sentient space storm bent on the eradication of everything; and a swarm of hive minded space bugs

Fractal Superhero Setting creation 1

(Image from Cosmic Tales #1)

Introduction:

Fractal Campaign Creation 

A complex and satisfying campaign requires a solid and coherent setting. Superhero settings range in scale from a single city to a multiverse and often encompass elements such as time travel and alternate reality as well. 

Despite this variation in scope, most settings and sub-settings share a similar array of traits, differing from one another in degree, but not kind. This similarity in characteristics, regardless of scale, allows one setting to be nested within another, i.e., a neighborhood within a city; a city within a country; a country within a continent; a continent on a planet; a planet in a solar system; a solar system in a galaxy; a galaxy in a cluster; a cluster in a universe;  a universe in a multiverse and so on. 

These traits are as follows:

Four classes of sentient beings exist: Villains; citizens; superheroes and forces; each engages reality with unique motivations; behaviors and philosophies.

Environment is often, at least in part, a reflection of the villain(s) and, in game terms, should be thought of as an hostile NPC. Otherwise environment should contain several landmarks, hazards, wonders and mysteries. 

History reduces to the following: The beginning; the good old days; the disaster- which leads up to the present, AKA: This fallen world. 

Each class of sentients views the same history through a different lens. 

Origins profoundly impact the present.

Historically speaking, everyone feels put upon. 

Turf belongs to someone. Turf unprotected will fall to chaos. Villains claim their turf in an explicit and hierarchal manner; heroes, perforce operating in the same territory, assert their claim in much more passive, implicit and (often grudging) egalitarian manner. Turf wars manifest in many different ways and provide the initial impetus for numerous conflicts.