>>97492482
>monarchies not very popular in cyberpunk
Thank you for inspiring me to potentially give this a shot if I can find players down for cyberpunk themed ttrpg sessions.

As for why I think it is because cyberpunk and mega corporations go hand in hand with the high tech low lives so a monarchy is usually not considered.

Are there any good examples of cyberpunk monarchies though?

Corporations usually sit on top of governments, so that's an oligarchy at the best of times, while in cases like arasaka it's essentially a monarchy in all but name.

>>97492482
fantasy and sci-fi are huge genres with a lot of random shitters writing stuff
monarchy is (probably) the most simple shit to write
cyberpunk is a well-defined niche genre and only recently started having a surge of random dogshit

>>97492535
Yeah but it’s still pretty different. Like, take Battletech for example, Battletech ostensibly has some corporate inspiration, but really it’s all just monarchism. The corporations take a backseat to the monarchy, your dynasty is much more important than the corporation.

By comparison, Arisaka might be owned by a single person and passed down, but the emphasis is on the corporation, much less so the person in charge.

>>97492482
>>And monarchies are the most common government in interstellar sci-fi
Are they really though?

>>97492559
The emphasis is on the corporation is because when you operate at street level, as the average punk, you're basically guaranteed to interact with all sorts of grunts, but will never see someone from the higher ups. It would be like saying that a monarchy is not the emphasis because you see the city guards and not the king while strolling around.

>>97492482
Cyberpunk is our own world in the near future and it's a lot less plausible that an actual monarchy would somehow develop between now and then than that it would hundreds or thousands of years from now. This is so obvious that it's weird you needed to make a thread about it, think before posting next time.

>>97492629
That’s not really the reason. I doubt if you killed the CEO of Arisaka the corporation would just dissolve or even fall apart into civil war. Despite having an owner it still presumably had shareholders and they would simply pick a new head. Because ultimately, the goal of a monarchy and a corporation are very different. The goal of a monarchy is to rule. The goal of a corporation is to make money. The actual CEO doesn’t really matter too much to a corporation beyond their capacity to make the corporation money. A CEO ultimately is just another member of the staff on wages. The shareholders aren’t fighting to be CEO because they ultimately just want more money, not control of the company.

>>97492618
Yes. Traveller, Dune, Battletech, Fading Suns, Warhammer 40k, Dragonstar, Andromeda, Crest of the Stars, The Foundation, The Mote in God’s Eye, In Fury Born, CoDominium, Legend of the Galactic Heroes, and a lot more.

>>97492646
If you said that for militech I might agree, but arasaka is a very different beast.

>>97492482
>And monarchies are the most common government in interstellar sci-fi
Eh, space empires are about as common as anything else. Space federations, space mega-corps, space fascists, space commies, space zealots, space oligarchies, space cartels, space nomads, hive minds. The whole point is that you can have as big of a sampling platter as you want because space is fucking big.

>>97492741
Yeah but 4 out of 5 times it’s gonna be space monarchy

>>97492738
Is it? It’s still a public corporation. 54% of the shares are owned by the Arasaka family sure but I’m doubtful it wouldn’t survive their death.

>>97492482
Monarchies are easier to ignore how complicated they could be so its appealing to writers who either don't want to or can't write complexity and for audiences that can't understand or don't want to read complexity.
They can just say
>there's a (Space) King and a Bad (Space) King >they fight so buy our game.
That's it. You could get into how scifi has enough distance and time involved in travel and communication that it will exaggerate the overall human tendency towards some form of oligarchy that becomes hereditary via nepotism over time if you want but most game writers and readers don't have the ability to make that very interesting, plausible, etc.
They can write lots of it, but it'll be trash. Best example would be battletech. Tons of lore and variation, but its all pretty bad and ignorant of basically every study of human activity.

>>97492764
Most interstellar settings will have at least one space monarchy, sure, but I'd say space federations are just as common.

>>97492789
That's not the point, a lot of monarchies survived the death of the ruler.

>>97492672
I'm not sure I agree with all these.
>Battletech
Not quite feudal, the Federated Suns has a (weakened) parliamentary component with House Davion serving as prime ministers. In addition, the Combine and the Commonwealth have very complex bureaucratic systems. The League itself even claims to be a democracy and has an actual parliament.
>Warhammer 40k
That's a theocracy. While the high lords of Terra are very much the powers behind the throne (until Girlyman), officially the clergy are the ones who interpret the God Emperor's will. Rogue Traders are more akin to robber barons or CEOs without oversight like the Gettys or the Rockerfellers.
>The Foundation
I don't agree with this. While the Foundation has to deal with feudal societies during its early phase, the entity itself is technocratic in nature.

>>97492482
Monarchies are easier to write and are inherently understood by the audience, would be my guess. Party politics and parliamentary procedures are dull and impersonal in comparison, especially if you have a negative view on politics in general.

>>97492852
before primarchs the imperium was very much an oligarchy.
>officially the clergy are the ones who interpret the God Emperor's will
Where did you get this? The custodes were, and they strictly regulated whoever came into the throne room. Some of the priests may ramble about "the emperor's will" while pushing for this or that, but that doesn't mean they're officially the emperor's mouthpieces.

>>97492852
Nobody said anything about feudalism, just monarchism. Battletech is undoubtably an extremely monarchist setting, to the point that monarchies make up like 98% of the governments in the setting, even the few non-monarchies are in fact monarchies in all but name as they end up being hereditary autocracies. The only known republics in the setting exist either in the periphery or in the deep periphery and are so minor and insignificant most players don’t even know they exist.

>>97492482
The further we get from it, the more monarchical it all seems.

>>97492841
Right but my point is that the center of power is inherently on the corporation itself, not on its majority shareholders. The focal point of power in a monarchy is the monarch themselves and the crown. But this isn’t really the case for a corporation. The CEO might be the decision maker but they’re not the center of power, that would be the corporation itself, to the point that even minority shareholders are still able to force CEO’s to act in their interest given the very machinery of the corporation is forced towards one of pure profit motive.

>>97492925
>not on its majority shareholders
That's the thing, arasaka is lead by a de facto ruling family that holds all relevant power, add to that the japanese social structure. Troops and middlemen are often enough loyal to the family, not the corporation.

>>97492938
Okay fair enough Arasaka is basically just a monarchy with a corporate extension of their power then

>>97492955
Yup. Militech is more like the usual corporation, but i never read their dossier. Did they even get one?

>>97492925
>not on its majority shareholders.
>get rich with company
>give money to family
>family buys majority shares
Done.

>>97493064
Even if you own the majority of the shares it’s not really “your” corporation, you can still be sued even by a minority of shareholders for not acting in the interests of the corporation's profits. A corporation is effectively its own institutional machine, nobody truly “rules” it.

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>>97492672
The Foundation isn't a monarchy at all. They're basically gravitating around being the social equivalent of that thought experiment in pic related.

>>97493082
That stops working as intended when you have malicious cyberware, cloned ninja assassins and all sorts of shit.

>>97492559
>really it’s all just monarchism
The free worlds league would beg to differ. They can barely keep themselves together, essentially being 20 nations in a trenchcoat pretending to be a great house and is so racked with civil wars it's known as the curse of Marik.
You also have the very in depth Clan form of government that includes elections and feats of strength to select their ultimate leader and even then there's a lot of politicking to get anything done and organized. So it's really more like a militant Greek style democracy complete with only certain people having the right to vote and choose their leaders (that being mostly the accomplished warriors)

>>97493082
>Own cops
>Own legal
>Somehow still get sued
No. You're depending on positions not power to self regulate. They don't.

>>97493158
The Free Worlds League literally has a law that they can only be ruled by a specific dynasty dude, they’re a monarchy in all but name

>>97493199
That's like bolivar that tried to make it so that his presidency would be for life and inheritable, predictably the people told him to fuck off.

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>>97492482

>>97493172
https://youtu.be/sOt-G2LVgfI?si=JrW4dQLCYsBA49Gz

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>>97493199
True but he was also checked and had his hand forced until post clan invasion reforms back when planets could flood the parliament with representatives based on the amount of taxes they pay. The Captain general has to put up with a lot of shit trying to juggle over 100 micro nations inside it and it showed.

>>97493232
Yes but they’re retarded

>>97492482
easier to write a monarchy than an actual government.

>>97492672
Now list the ones where republics and federations not ruled by kings are prominent.

>>97492482
Cyberpunk settings are built around a pastiche of late-20th-cenutry Capitalist-"Liberal Democracy" trends, so they're pretty firmly "locked in" a "post-Monarchy" political paradigm. It wouldn't actually be much trouble to justify with how much of that overlaps with early industrialization troubles typifying the shift from nobles to merchants, but fitting cyberpunk-isms to the political backdrop more typical of steampunk takes some thinking since you're "skipping steps".

>>97492535
The mega-corps cyberpunk exaggerates are informally on top of most politicians, but are somewhere in the middle decidedly beneath inter-administration "Deep State" actors like the intelligence community or quangos.

>>97492789
To my recollection, Japanese zaibatsu generally have the overall conglomerate connected mostly by a family-run holding company, so if you eradicated the Arasaka family there'd be no clear inheritance of that "connective tissue" to keep the swirling shitshow of Cyberpunk lower management herded in the same direction. There's still a chance somebody picks up the "keys to the kingdom", as it were, but it's not remotely certain it'd stay together as the heads of the subsidiaries race to be "The Top Boss" of their piece.

>>97493082
You're talking about a very specific Americanism instituted by Henry Ford being sued by his competitors, which even so doesn't actually work this way in practice. Corporations are in fact allowed to operate with profit as strictly facultative to other motives, a pretty obvious example being OpenAI before it went through quite a bit of effort to re-classify itself. Which created grounds to be sued by investors promised the previous motive like Elon Musk.

>>97492892
Well, think about what the Custodes are: they play a highly spiritual role in Imperial society and dictate who can see a holy relic, in addition to acting as the spiritual mouthpiece. They're clergymen even if they say otherwise.

>>97493419
I can think of a couple:
>Star Wars
>Star Trek
>Fahrenheit 451
>Starship Troopers
>2001: a Space Odyssey
>Fallout (even the Legion seems to be more akin to a Statocracy)

>>97493947
Tbf Star Wars may not have monarchy in most systems but the central stories tend to take place around monarchies (Queen Padme of Naboo and Princess Leiah of Alderaan)

>>97494106
Padme was elected into her position, and later elected out. That's not a monarchy, that's some kind of republic with fancy titles.

>>97492482
Because you hinge your identity on what other people have made, instead of making your games how you want.

>>97493082
And a monarchist state can end up with Magna Carta while still being a monarchy.

>>97492482
>monarchies are the most common government in interstellar sci-fi
Holy shit what a retarded assertion. It's usually some sort of fruity loose federation, though sometimes these federations have monarchies amongst their number.

>>97493947
>lists LotGH for space monarchy
>but not for space democracy
Disingenuousfag being disingenuous yet again. May as well say Gundam is exclusively about space monarchies too.

>>97494851
Federations might be the second most popular but monarchies are definitely the most popular

>>97496442
Nah. Maybe if you said evil empires you'd have a point but you didn't so you don't.

>>97492482
Monarchies are cool and based and simple to understand. Historically they're the most common form of government and thus has the most real-life material to draw from. They're also uncommon to post WW2 westerners and therefore exotic.

>>97494870
LOTGH has the democracy lose and be annexed by the monarchy

>>97492672
>Dragonstar
Unfathomably unreproachably based beyond all belief.

>>97492482
Monarchies are... Stable, for a lack of a better word. They can be condensed all the way down to 'Strong person is in charge because they were strong, and their kids are going to be in charge next because the strong person said so.' This level of simplicity ensures that everyone resorts to some variation of it at some point, and it allows for some robust actions between kingdoms because the keys to power are consolidated, allowing for expansive visions built upon its stable back for background purposes.

That same stability ensures that the Punk style of settings usually run against the ideas involved. Cyberpunk, Atompunk, and Biopunk require a level of uncaring treatment that gets spread across the whole setting, for example. Why else would everyone be throwing themselves whole-heartedly into the insanity involved? Some level of that punkish nature, of rebelling against a system that cannot care about you, is involved in most of the Punk genre to begin with. Monarchies, while they can be hellish, can't achieve the uncaring nature most Punk settings need to exist with for an overarching theme. Monarchies still need subjects after all, even if most people in them wouldn't count.

Cyberpunk's just the easiest one for demonstrating that, as most cyberpunk settings treat life as outright worthless thanks to the usefulness of machines over people.

>>97492482
It's pretty obvious, when you consider the literary origins of cyberpunk. >>97493456 gets it.

>>97496591
Eh kinda, the ending to LoGH is about as messy as real-life history. The FPA loses multiple systems, and is briefly under total imperial occupation, but after the final battle core FPA territories regain some autonomy as a protectorate, similar to how Phezzan was at the start of the series. Not to mention Reinhard and especially the soon to be regent Empress Hildegard were genuinely considering reforming into a constitutional monarchy after lengthy discussions with our FPA protagonists.

LoGH gives pros and cons to multiple systems of government, it's more of a space epic written by a historian in a very historical manner than an attempt to espouse a preferred political theory. It very clearly provides heroes and villains on both sides of the war, and easily the most emotionally impactful part of the story is watching good men kill each other because of a war no one man has the power to unilaterally stop. It's really quite a kino show and I don't like when people use it to try and score points in political theory arguments.

Also, I am strongly of the opinion that Reinhard's empire is going to balkanize in 10-15 years top. He gave casus belli to depose his son on his death bed. His wife is considering constitutionalism on top of all the radical reforms Reinhard already forced through. We saw with Grillpalzer that the next generation of officers is about as loyal to him as he was to the last Kaiser. He built his capital in the middle of what was for all intents and purpose, a foreign country he conquered by force. Reinhard is a mix of a half dozen great men of history but his cult of personality, youth, beauty, and early death all scream Alexander. I bet it'll all fall apart before his son grows into a man.

>>97492482
Fantasy settings steal from history, where monarcies were more common, so that should be obvious.
Sci-fi is primarily because if the PCs go to a planet and need to talk to someone in charge, it's easier to have that be a king, instead of having hundred of different nations and at best being able to speak to some random senator.
Sometimes sci-fi puts in more effort than that, but it's a pretty easy way to have one guy in charge of a planet/faction in order to humanize the scale.

>>97496916
Why would literary origins matter to games? They're two entirely different forms of media.

>>97492646
>I doubt if you killed the CEO of Arisaka the corporation would just dissolve or even fall apart into civil war.
A central part of the fluff in CP:Red is that Arasaka is inches away from descending into civil war. Why speak to thing that you obviously have zero interest in and haven't looked into at all?

>>97492852
>>97493096
I assume he is talking about the setting before the Foundation is, uh, founded, which had an imperial monarch.

>>97492482
Traditional games?

>>97492646
>I doubt if you killed the CEO of Arisaka the corporation would just dissolve or even fall apart into civil war
This is what happened in the vidya and it was sanctioned by Mike Niggersmith

>>97494297
>That's not a monarchy
It's an elective monarchy. We've had them on Earth many times. Archaic Greece had a couple. Anglo-saxons did it. Gauls did it. Merovingians, Carolinginans, early Holy Roman Empire. Still have it with the Knights of Malta, even if they control no territory, Cambodia and the Roman Catholic Church, who both do control territory.

Republics see a more power remain with the general population albeit often indirectly through a popular vote and elected representatives such as a senate while a monarch, as the title says, rules alone.

>>97497718
Because he's a nogames tourist making threads just to """worldbuild""", i.e. fill space on the board. The real mystery is whether he's doing this because he's a lifeless autist with no inner monologue or because he's a lifeless jeet getting paid 1 rupee per thread to make /tg/ look more alive than it actually is

>>97492482
>Why is a near-future setting trying to be close to real world, while a made-up setting and far future of the world are allowed to get away with completely different concepts?
Truly a mystery!

>>97492482
Because authoritarianism is the default state of humanity.

>>97500788
But most modern authoritarian governments are not monarchies.

>>97492482
For me, it always had to do with communication. There is always a sovereign entity from which all things nominally flow.

In a feudal/fantasy setting, the King controls all. But he cannot be everywhere at once. Thus, power is delegated to increasingly local lords in a web of trust, because it may take days or weeks to ensure that an order is being followed.

The same is true for sci-fi settings, particularly those without instantaneous communication. Just replace estates with entire worlds.

With cyberpunk, communication is uniformly instant. There is no need for trust. Structures can be changed in an instant, with no apparent loss to the lower tiers. Additionally, corporations are centered on production, not governance. Thus, several are usually required to maintain a society, which infringes on the idea of a single sovereign in a single space.

It is that trust that separates monarchy from dictatorship. The top can remove whomever they like, but will have a much harder go of it in a monarchy. Indeed, in this we can see an almost monarchical structure to corporations, with CEOs as kings, and branch managers as lords and subsidiaries as vassals. It is the fluidity of these positions that separate the two.

>>97494297
>and later elected out

No, she hit her term limit. Anakin straight up says that the Naboo wanted to amend their constitution so that she could remain Queen, but she didn't support it.

Why would Cyberpunk have a monarchy?

>>97494106
Naboo's "queens" are elected, not hereditary. The only reason Leia is a "princess" is because of her mom. Bail Organa was a Senator. Granted, the Republic was an Empire at that time, but only for 20+ years out of thousands.

>>97492892
Don'y Inquisitors pretty much have absolute power?