Worldbuilding is about making places and people! Whether you worldbuild to write, for an RPG, or just for fun, welcome!
Political Structures
So how much attention do you pay to your political structures when worldbuilding? Do you build it out based on real world politics or homebrew it so to speak?




My favorite kinds of stories tend to be pretty political! Unfortunately I haven't been writing a ton of original fic as of late, but my fanfic often veers into worldbuilding political systems that weren't originally there in the canon, and in that case I generally have to work within those confines. I will almost always start with something historical, if only because I know then that it was stable enough at some point in history to persist.
Currently I'm writing an organized crime story explicitly based on my own hometown in the '20s and '30s. It's pretty easy to research and it's safe to assume almost everyone's on the take but depending on their prominence they may be more or less subtle about it. Because the tone is darkly humorous and there's a fantasy element, I often exaggerate slightly, although every now and then I come across something in my research that I decide I'd better tone down.
I think one of the more important things to remember is that the system, whatever it is, is made up of individuals, and the individuals are influenced by the system but are probably not going to be perfect cogs in the machine. Some of them will be nigh-perfect, some will stick out and dictate the movements of other cogs that they weren't supposed to have contact with, some will break, and some will go off into the corner and start a black market to sell each other oil and extra cog-teeth and break down the entire machine metaphor. In order to be stable and believable, your political system can't be too rigid unless you're positing a mind-control-filled dystopia.
Yes indeed! Culture and subculture and counterculture and outsiders all figure in and I LOVE your metaphor for it. :) This sounds fascinating actually with everyone in on it but to varying degrees.
I finally started making myself look at politics in my original fiction specifically because of fanfiction. You're doing good work.
That sounds super interesting. Is it a prohibition story? I love that era. It's utterly fascinating on so many levels.
Sorry for the super-late reply -- yes, it's set during the overlap between Prohibition and the Great Depression! But also, because it's fantasy, I have some additional weird shit influencing things. Like, several characters are stranded time travelers from the future (well, the future relative to the early '30s), and the mob boss is ...actually surprisingly idealistic, but also a former medieval ruler who has very different ideas about ideal governance and democracy, for example. So I'm not sure it's particularly good in terms of... any kind of historicity given all the weird influences I've added. But I'm having fun with it!
It's not something I tend to consider much, beyond quick sketches things like "this place has feudalism, and their king uses human sacrifice to stay young". When I start making stuff up, it's definitely a process of taking multiple real world inspirations and whatever sounds cool and then squishing it into the world.
Tbh, that sounds like a super interesting story premise. Do you have any favorite "cool" things?
Human sacrifice? :P
But also cultures with a nomadic age groups. Like if it was common for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 20 to group up in packs of 5-10 and travel. Hypothetically they're travelling to find romantic partners, but the real reason the practice started is rooted in some kind of historical weirdness.
It's an idea I've played with more than once, trying to figure out what that kind of culture would look like, and what kind of world would have to surround them for sending their kids out into the world and hoping they'd make it back to seem like a good idea.
Sounds like short on resources. Kids go find resources, support themselves, because the food, whatever is now needed for the new kids coming up, then come back with knowledge or goods that enrich the community, kind of like a quest tradition or else found their own places and settle elsewhere.
But I really, really like that idea in general. There are so many directions it could go.
I actually was thinking desert or small islands with limited resources. Possibly somewhere that had no access to something super essential, like salt, and they need all adults on hand to do something terribly important. Possibly guarding the ancient tomb of the devil's favorite dog or something like that. Maybe the entrance to the underworld...that would be interesting. Maybe proximity to the underworld eventually mutates them, and teenagers are the closest to normal-looking in the village.
My other thought was that they're actually being sent out to tend herds of livestock, but that's a possibly less interesting story opener than being sent out to find x or die trying. Or maybe not...they get sent out to swap out with the slightly older group, and then can't find them or the sheep/cattle/unicorn herd.
It's fun to take inspiration from real world politics of the past (where they're all played out and you can see what happened and consider what could have gone differently) but to ultimately just make things up.
I get intimidated by getting anything historical or fact-checkable right. I end up just "making stuff up" a lot.
I admire the people who can use real world stuff to work from.
Well, for instance, we know there are many real life things GRRM used as inspiration when writing his massive political network, but you don't have to get them exactly right as long as you're writing in a different setting then our present. Even if you are writing something that is set here, and doesn't involve sci-fi or magic, you can always just claim it's an alternate universe where, idk, Cesar had a cold the day he was going to be murdered.
LOL That's a hilarious visual to me. Imagine an assassin thwarted by the common cold!
That aside, I'm trying to do more of this and incorporate some real world assessments of politics into my made up world political scenes. I have a tendency to build up the basic structure on the fly though and then try to use real world to figure out the implications and potential results, which obviously varies widely based on a lot of things.
I will eventually get over my fear of getting things wrong. I hope!
I tend to like clan structures and stuff that grows out of families getting bigger and self-ruling. At least for my protags. I do have to vary things up when I surround them with other cultures or it'd get real boring (and unrealistic) real fast.
So the political structure I'm playing with now is a space setting with a clans group that divides itself into three different kinds of clan members:
Burning Sigil has a council of the heads of the various colonial governments, but they don't rule any planets nor are they always a consistent voice for integrated diaspora. Singing Sigil is ruled by the head of each clan within the sigil, with those heads (so far) offering nominal allegiance to the High Family of the Turning Sigil. The Turning Sigil is ruled by clans heads under the High Family, which are functionally royalty but with mandatory service because of protective functions they can fill well. If the High Family fails in those functions, they cannot retain their status and it will pass to the line that does.
Whenever decisions are made affecting Clan law, the council, Clan heads, and the High Family have to gather together to deliberate and vote, with the swing vote going to the head of the High Family, but he's unable to override total opposition.
Frankly, I don't know if any real world political structure mirrors this exactly but considering how much work goes into international relations due to the Burning Sigil's residence and the Singing Sigil's business, I'm trying to give more careful thought to the governments around them.